Review: In the Joshua Sea

M. Stillman, In the Joshua Sea (Gneiss 2023)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/208297629-in-the-joshua-sea?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=kWZGvXQerf&rank=1

6 stars

Desert flora and fauna—Joshua trees, brittlebushes, yucca moths, iguanas, antelope squirrels—form the background as humans drill for gold in 1929. Haberman, ‘the Captain’, has leased a portion of the old Anaconda Mine for a few months, which he’s working with a four-man team, Stan, Jem, himself and newcomer William Quine. William, a Native American half-breed, is in the desert trying to reconnect with his roots and/or strike gold.
The author admits an intentional parallel to Moby Dick. Haberman was a sailor in the Navy and remembers an influential encounter with a whale. The vast expanse of the desert is in many ways contrasted with the sea, and whale/deep sea-related metaphors are used to describe the desert and the characters’ relation to it. ‘Where Ahab is trying to hunt down the whale, Haberman is trying to get away from it,’ says Stillman. The desert is the opposite of the sea, and Haberman is the opposite of Ahab. The main protagonist William Quine, the Native American half-breed, has his analogue in Queequeg, a Pacific Islands harpooner who ‘marries’ Ishmael, Moby Dick’s narrator. Ishmael’s spiritual quest is paralleled with the spiritual quest of Quine to reconnect with his native roots. And the hubris of Ahab’s obsession with revenge is mirrored in the miners reaping the consequences of their rape of the natural world.
The opening and entire ending are absolutely fantastic. The chapter endings often draw parallels between the humans and the fauna, and many of the metaphors are really gorgeous.
The genius loci is genius. Most brilliant about this novel is the interplay between the humans’ narrative and the actions of the desert fauna. The descriptions of the desert animals are so important they become characters in the drama. The story moves slowly, alternating between the humans and the animals, insects and plants of the desert, creating a languid, hypnotic effect, like the shimmering waves of an oasis in the heat. We feel the baking heat of the desert sun, and in the silence, hear the beating of the hawk’s wing and the scatter of an ant’s run.