Amaranthine Chevrolet by Dennis E Bolen

Reviewed by Emily Weedon

In Amaranthine Chevrolet, Dennis E Bolen takes the readers along for the ride while 15-year-old Robin drives from Saskatchewan across the country in a 1942 Chevy, destination: Vancouver, and home. This half-baked kid plans to traverse hundreds of kilometres and provinces using back roads and tracks, avoiding arrest over the sketchy provenance of his sweet ride and lack of a licence.

I was reminded of trips I’ve taken across this land, voyages west by car, bus or plane. Travelling the East West corridor of our nation along either the Trans Canada Highway or railway is baked into the national psyche. People have long gone vaulting “out west” or “down East” for work as cycles of boom bust draw tree planters, miners, oil workers, farmers, film workers, oil workers and so on to brief fields of plenty. We cling to the border with the US, where the fat of the land usually lays. Bolen’s work gives us the representation of one such fraught, lateral journey across this vast land of ours.

There’s been much talk about the idea of emptiness in Canada. The US talks about taking it over because, in one post I read, we don’t ‘use’ enough of it. Arguments have been made to cancel or back burner the Group of Seven because of claims their vistas of emptiness support colonialism. What I find interesting is that, even in 1967 when the book is set, land is spoken for. It is hard to disappear entirely. The vast wilderness of human imagination has almost entirely been cultivated. There’s always a road. There’s always a gate. Frequently it’s a gate that Robin is smart and kind enough to repair, if forced to tin snip his way through.

This book has a literary relative in The Odyssey. Instead of wily Odysseus seeking home after long years, it is a young boy with a hair brained quest, not much money or experience, trusting in the good of strangers and luck. The book starts leisurely, almost bucolic and things go fairly easily for the boy who ably deals with obstacles – dodging RCMP, getting lost while threading his way. The obstacles gradually become more complex when he encounters hitchhiking hippies with a different world view than he’s hitherto been accustomed to rattle Robin’s senses.

The narrative could have gone further when underage Robin experiences the advances of an older girl. We could have delved more into his mixed feelings of nascent desire and reluctance. Despite the law, we all know that adolescence thrusts currents of misunderstood desire on us. Inadvisable and dangerous to engage in as, say, driving a car across the country with no licence.

Clever like Odysseus, Robin is good with mechanics, which serves him. I appreciated the granular detail of how the boy babies the machinery of his truck. It is a lost art in this day of vehicles that get diagnosed by computers. No more can one do a jury-rigged campfire weld, nor enlist a pair of pantyhose as a fan belt.

Stakes in the book amp up via various bad actors. A particularly chilling, yet funny scene pits the boy against a drug-runner and narcissist -- a narc two ways. Robin is frequently asked to meet circumstances that most couch dwelling 15-year-olds would run from.

One of Bolens’ best features is clean, clear dialog. Presented without quotation marks, there is never a question as to who is speaking. The generally sparse dialog brought Cormack McCarthy to my mind. The searing McCarthy vibe did not extend to action, however: McCarthy plumbs horrific depths, violence that makes the heart quiver. The action in Amaranthine Chevrolet rolls out more gently and strolls quietly and purposely towards its climax. Things take a change in the last fifth when the action lays on, besetting young Robin with demands not of a boy, but of a man. The truck he drives takes Robin over and through the perilous threshold from boyhood to adulthood. Bolen brings everything together at the end of the journey with details which make the reader reconsider each action the boy has taken.

“Life is pretty much just trying to get through without your heart turning to frozen stone.” one character tells us. Bolen compares Robin against this, without resorting to sentimentality. The long build up is payoff in the end. There is a gentleness to Robin that speaks of quiet strength and dignity. It is also, at its heart, a quest for love. Overall, the novel conjured Chrietien de Troyes for me, who wrote his romances to admonish and socially engineer the rapine and rage of young, landed men.

I find it interesting that Bolen, author of many novels, veteran of many literary roles, was also a federal parole officer. He digs into the depths of choice, good actions, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, as well as determinants of character or criminality. He invites us to think about nature and nurture in the formation of character. I imagine that he might have thought up these words he gave another character when he was still working in Corrections:

“It’s us adults finishing an upbringing for other adults that didn’t get a proper one in the first place…But when you talk about children who go astray it’s not just them that has to answer. It’s the parents, society, the government, the whole world. Everybody bears responsibility.”

Sure-handed storytelling that reads simply and cleanly and carries great depth and meaning in the telling, Amaranthine Chevrolet lingers and casts a ruddy western glow on the imagination.

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About the Author

Dennis E. Bolen is the author of several novels, short story collections, and one volume of poetry. His fiction explores the experience of varied careers: social worker, university instructor, arts journalist, accounts clerk, mill worker, farm hand. He grew up on Vancouver Island and now lives in Victoria, BC.

About the Reviewer

Emily Weedon is a CSA award winning screenwriter and author of the dystopian debut Autokrator, with Cormorant Books. Her forthcoming novel Hemo Sapiens, will be published in September 2025, with Dundurn Press. https://emilyweedon.com/

Book Details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Rare Machines

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 13 2025

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 256 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1459754778

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1459754775