It is a truism that you can’t ever really go home after leaving. It should also be noted that even if you can, you probably shouldn’t. Everything from Thomas Wolfe’s challenging novel, YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN --- the title lays it out right there, doesn’t it? --- to Falling From Grace, John Mellencamp’s underrated, flawed cinematic marvel, shows us why that is so. Add THE STORM KING, Brendan Duffy’s riveting sophomore effort, to that list. It will discourage any plans you might have to journey back to the family homestead if you indeed need to be reminded.

The third person narrative ping-pongs back and forth in time for a good two-thirds of the book. The present takes place over a very difficult two days for Nate McHale, a favorite son of the upscale Greystone Lake in the Adirondack area of upstate New York. Nate overcame horrific personal tragedy in his youth to become a respected surgeon with a loving family in New York City. His visits to his hometown have been very limited in number, but as the present-day account of THE STORM KING opens, Nate is returning to his hometown some 14 years after he took his leave in order to attend a funeral. That event has been occasioned by the discovery of the body of Lucy Bennett, his high school sweetheart, who had gone missing from Greystone Lake on the night that she, Nate and his friends graduated from high school. Lucy was presumed to have run away from home, but her passing --- and the conclusion that she had been murdered --- reopens the past for Nate and the town.

"This latest title is peppered with memorable characters who many of us will recognize from our own lives and who, from Nate’s viewpoint, carry the story as its pace increases exponentially from chapter to chapter."

In addition to paying his respects, Nate is intending to reconnect with the friends he left behind. The description of his past proceeds along two tracks, one dealing with his senior year and the other with the events of their graduation night. It is in the accounts of the past that we see a different side of Nate, which gave rise to his nickname among his friends as “The Storm King.” As often happens in the real world as well as fictitious ones, a hometown return tends to churn up old secrets and resentments. What Nate learns is that the discovery of Lucy’s corpse is contemporaneous with a series of increasingly destructive acts of vandalism that are visited upon Lucy’s friends’ high school and their families, including Nate’s grandmother, who runs a popular restaurant in the town, and his pals.

Nate and his buds know the significance of the vandalism, and that secret is one of many that are slowly revealed as the past is peeled away page by page. As a hurricane-force storm bears down on the town, bringing with it a destruction all its own, Nate discovers some long-hidden truths while revealing a number of secrets of his own. By book’s end, almost nothing is the same.

While THE STORM KING does share some elements with Duffy’s debut novel, HOUSE OF ECHOES, it is anything but a rewrite of that worthy work. This latest title is peppered with memorable characters who many of us will recognize from our own lives and who, from Nate’s viewpoint, carry the story as its pace increases exponentially from chapter to chapter. Although the book proceeds somewhat deliberately in its beginning, the reader reaches a point early on where it becomes all but impossible to put down. Be warned, though: Don’t start THE STORM KING without planning out a good chunk of time to read it in one sitting. You’ll use every minute of it.