Contributing Writer
Christopher Shaw’s “The Power Line” is a complex novel set mostly in the Adirondacks during and soon after the Prohibition years. Lonnie Monroe and Francois Germaine work in the woods for Paul Smith, bringing electricity to his hotel. They are also bootleggers, transporting liquor from Canada to upstate New York. In part one of “Power Line,” Monroe and Germaine come alive through the work of another fictional character, Abel St. Martin. This is Shaw’s frame for the tale, the story within the story: St. Martin sat with Monroe in the Trap Dyke tavern in Lake Aurora in 1983, interviewing and tape-recording the old man’s story. It’s a heck of a story, preserved in St. Martin’s transcripts that are discovered later by the narrator/editor. It has notorious gangsters like Dutch Schultz and Legs Diamond, includes a thrilling trip to Montreal, chilling descriptions of moving contraband through the frozen Adirondacks, and insights into the tuberculosis
Christopher Shaw s
The Power Line escaped our attention until recently, but the book is an uncommon accomplishment that merits a belated review. Shaw, who lives in Bristol and has retired after 20 years of teaching creative writing at Middlebury College, preceded that career with a long stint in northern New York. His time on the other side of Lake Champlain, both as a guide and as editor of
Adirondack Life, richly informs
The Power Line. The book declares itself to be a novel, and Shaw goes to some pains to support its status as fiction. He even prefaces his tale with a cautionary Note to the Reader that states: