Drive to Survive

Where should we place our faith in times of upheaval? Some might suggest family, God, money, government, literature, or television. Others might say the future, history, nature, ourselves alone, or nowhere at all. How, though, would we know that such faith was well placed? These grand questions and tentative answers reverberate across Rob Benvie’s ambitious and incantatory fourth novel.

Set in the 1950s, The Damagers follows the plight of recently orphaned, adolescent sisters, Zina and Presendia, as they flee their former home — which burned down — and head heedlessly into the Adirondacks. After a few days in the woods, they encounter a mysterious “tall man” who offers them water and a place to stay. He brings them to a group of exiles, misfits, true believers, and burnouts led by Peter, a charismatic and temperamental man who “fancied himself a latter-day Amos.” Quickly embraced by this quasi-millenarian sect, Zina is assigned to serve as Peter’s scribe...