In Dreams of Arcadia, a debut novel by Brian Porter, Nate Holub is a veterinarian who returns to the small town in rural Texas where his father grew up. He’s there for his uncle’s funeral when he meets the local veterinarian who could use some help and offers him a job. Nate is struggling with a recent divorce and sharing custody of his two teenage daughters. The change seems like a promising one; plus it’s an opportunity to learn more about the father who died when he was young.
Nate gets to explore a very different side of veterinary medicine, going from primarily working with cats and dogs to treating cattle and horses, animals that are the livelihoods of the people that live in Hadlow. I appreciated Nate’s insecurity as he’s thrown into a demanding new side of his profession, while at the same time wrestling with family issues that have gone unresolved for years. The author is a veterinarian himself, which will be clear from the level of detail with which he writes about things like calving and castration (a warning to the squeamish here; this book will be too detailed for some).
As a character, Nate makes some decisions that felt questionable to me (like trespassing on his great uncle’s property, getting touchy-feely with a co-worker, and taking unnecessary risks as he’s learning his new profession). But I could appreciate his insecurities and see his growth. I had mixed feelings about the ending, but I enjoy a book that doesn’t try to wrap everything up with a bow at the end. Nate’s relationships with many of the characters are a work in progress, which I liked.
I like books about small town life, mainly because I’ve never lived in one myself. I appreciated the author’s rich description of the land, from flowers and trees I’d never heard of, and Nate’s personal growth reflected in his connection with his surroundings.
I didn’t know there were parts of rural Texas primarily settled by Eastern European immigrants (Czech and German), and as that’s my own background, I very much enjoyed reading about the food and customs of the area and understanding the different waves of immigrants that settled this part of the country. I like a book with a strong “sense of place”, where little details like street names matter. In this book I felt like I was there in Hadlow, which I could visualize from Porter’s rich details.
There were a lot of characters to keep track of in this book, even without the addition of a lot of extra cousins and side characters who weren’t integral to the plot. I had a hard time keeping track of who was related to who, which could have been addressed with more clear descriptions of each character and their relationship to the family. For example, Clarissa is introduced as Nate’s aunt but it took me a while to figure out how she was related to Nate.
I did want more character development of some key characters, like Nate’s grandmother, his aunt Clarissa, and his friend Irene. This is definitely a book written from a male perspective, and many of the female characters felt a little one dimensional. I did appreciate that Nate clearly wants to get to know these women better, so some of this is his character not feeling entirely comfortable around the women in his life.
Finally, I felt there was a bit too much “telling” at times rather than showing us Nate’s feelings through dialog and action. But this is a debut novel, and all in all, Porter tells an interesting story about a man who’s given a chance to explore his past while at the same time making a fresh start.
Note: I was given an advance review copy of this book by the author and publisher Legacy Book Press. This book was published on May 22, 2023.
