DEVIL IN THE VALLEY

Langdon Taft is a crabby alcoholic schoolteacher in rural Vermont, at a loss until a voice startles him from the rocking chair where a stranger has appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Dangerfield (a thinly disguised Mephistopheles) is a well-dressed, smooth talking and devilishly charming drinking partner. He offers Taft the chance to have anything he's ever wanted - for a price - before he is transported to Hell on Columbus Day, just seven months hence. Will he choose to be younger, powerful, wealthy and have more sex? Instead he does not behave as we think he might - he pays a very sick child's hospital bills, gives a wife beater a lesson he will never forget, prevents a dodgy bank foreclosing on a local farmer, rescues a drowning girl and even attacks school bus bullies. Does he deserve to go to Hell? He also had the reward of a flirtation with an attractive female State Trooper organised by Dangerfield. Taft would argue that he has successfully fooled the Devil by diverting his power to do good and to help the community in which he lives. Then there is the parallel story of Calpurnia, a 98 year old woman in a hospice waiting to die. 191pp, US first edition.