"First Light"

I wrote about Charles Baxter's novel "Feast of Love" on 3/22/10; one of several reasons I liked the book was its setting in Ann Arbor, Michigan, because I once lived in the AA area. I recently picked up, and read on the plane to and from a conference in Chicago, one of Baxter's older novels, "First Light" (Penguin, 1987), which also takes place (mostly) in Michigan, but this time in the Saginaw/Bay City area, where my parents and other family members once lived. There are two unusual characteristics of this novel. First, it starts in the present and moves backward in time, throughout the lives of the main characters all the way to early childhood, gradually revealing the roots of their relationships and choices in life. Second, the two main characters are brother and sister, a relationship seldom focused on in literature. Hugh was frequently told by his parents to take care of Dorsey, his younger sister. He always felt responsible for doing so, especially after their parents died young. The lives of the two siblings are very different; Hugh is a car salesman who dropped out of college, stayed in his parents' town and house, is in an unsatisfying marriage, and is the father of two young girls. He is reliable and caring, but there are moments when he is envious of Dorsey, who is an accomplished astrophysicist married to a loving but unfaithful actor, mother to a deaf son who is very well-adjusted, and moves around the country. There are various subplots, but the heart of the story is the sort of sibling dance between Hugh and Dorsey, and Baxter keeps us interested in their relationship and their stories.