HEADING OUT TO WONDERFUL by Robert Goolrick, 2012.
Brownsburg, Virginia, in 1948 is a quiet and peaceful village nestled in the beautiful Valley of Virginia. Everyone knows everyone else and everyone knows their place in life. The world is slow paced here, meant to be enjoyed calmly and serenely.
   One day a stranger arrives, carrying with him two suitcases and not much else. One suitcase has personal items and a lot of money in it; the other contains a set of butcher knives. As the townspeople soon discover, the handsome and friendly man is Charlie Beale, and he wants to settle in their peaceful community. He becomes enamoured of some acreage along the river and wants it for himself, as well as employment, which he finds with the local butcher, Will Haislett. The Haisletts, Will and his schoolteacher wife Alma and their six-year-old son Sam, become a huge part of Charlie's life in the village.
   Charlie, a personable and charming character, adjusts to life in the community and learns his way around, helped along by the Haisletts. He enjoys the companionship of Sam, who becomes like a son to him, and Sam finds a kindred spirit in Charlie--they share a love of baseball, dogs, and being outdoors. Along with the dog Charlie purchases and names Jackie Robinson (for the baseball player), they become a familiar sight around town. However, their easy relationship changes from the time Charlie first sees the teenaged Sylvan Glass, wife of the richest resident of Brownsburg--he is certain that the two of them are meant to be together. Blonde and lovely and from a remote area of the county, Sylvan had been bought and paid for by Boatwright Glass, to be his wife and to live the sort of Hollywood/movie star life she's always dreamed about. But once Charlie enters her orbit, events are set into motion that will change the lives of those who dwell in Brownsburg and ultimately lead to a shockingly heartbreaking tragedy.
   Goolrick knows how to tell a story. With his nicely paced narrative, he pulls the reader into a deceptively simpler time that is no more and adroitly makes his characters come to life. His descriptions of Brownsburg and the surrounding landscape are wonderful and add so much to the telling of the story: details of cars, fashions, movies, buildings, the way the farmlands look, the old trees and the river, names of real places in the county, all meld together to create a meaningful atmosphere, a real sense of time and place. His characters are multifaceted and so human, easy to relate to and have feelings for, to be concerned about. I kept reading because I wanted to know what would happen to these people, I had to find out how their stories and conflicts would turn out. His principal characters are well done and believable as people: Charlie, with his desire to belong and his obsession with Sylvan; Sylvan's passion to live her life as something out of a movie; Boaty's greed and jealousy and vulgarity; Claudie Wiley (who deserves a book of her own), the solitary black seamstress who could almost magically sew anything and keep herself aloof; and young Sam, who practically hero-worships Charlie, who becomes a part of Charlie's and Sylvan's illicit affair and who ends up experiencing situations that no kid should.
   Emotional and satisfying, at times painful, part Gothic romance and part nostalgia, with unflinching language and beautiful description and involving characters, it's a tale that has it all: Power, money, grand ideas, golden dreams, lust, doomed love, suspense, growing up, acceptance, baseball. Personally, I found this novel a thought-provoking and moving story about life and relationships in a small town, and a very worthwhile read.