Snow Man

by Chute, Carolyn

• ISBN13: 9780151003907
• ISBN10: 0151003904
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-05-01
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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Summary

Senator Kip Davies is dead, shot execution-style by a man news reports call a member of "an ultra-right-wing militia" from Maine. The hunt for the killer is nationwide, and yet the wounded assassin, Robert Drummond, has found refuge where he might least expect it-in the home of an out-of-town senator. There, the senator's wife and daughter become Drummond's protectors-if not his hostages-while he grows stronger during the next several heart-pulsing weeks. As they become intimately involved with Drummond, the two women learn firsthand the philosophy and psychology of the militia movement that has become such a terrifying puzzlement in America. And when their desperate drama ends, in a fashion at once unpredictable and inevitable, it brings with it a measure of understanding of how this country functions and dysfunctions.

Excerpts

Chapter One

October afternoon. Barroom in Boston, Massachusetts. Bulletin comes on the TV. Senator Kip Davies is dead. He was shot execution style in the lobby of an old Boston hotel. The men responsible are an ultra-right-wing militia from Maine. Four of these men are dead, shot by Boston police. But the man who actually fired the shot into the back of the senator's head is still at large. Further details not available.

    Everyone in the barroom cheers. "Get 'em all!" calls out one man. "Use a cannon!" He does not mean "get" the fleeing militiaman. He means Congress.

    Another guy says, "Yuh, but execution style is kinda ..." He shivers. "Brrrr."

    "Yeah. It'd be better if they just sneak up on 'em and do it humane," suggests another.

    "I don't give a shit," snarls the first man, tapping his cigarette on the ashtray between himself and the guy on the next stool. "They can tar an' feather 'em. Boil 'em. Roast 'em. Don't matter. Long as they get the bastards."

    "Watch out," another man cautions him. "I heard of a guy who was arrested and put away for saying that kinda thing. An' he was just a poor old retarded guy almost eighty years old."

    "This is America. I speak my mind."

    In barrooms and living rooms and dooryards and workplaces all over America, people discuss the senator's demise, followed by awkward discussions of the dangers of speaking one's mind.