"The Signal Flame" by Andrew Krivak

 

The Signal Flame is Andrew Krivak’s 2017 second entry in the Dardan Trilogy, after a fictional town in Pennsylvania, the stories’ home setting. Signal Flame shares the last events of the multigenerational saga with the third book, Like the Appearance of Horses (2023). The overarching story traces the remarkable life of Jozef Vinich, who fought for the Austro-Hungarians in the Great War, and through hard work, guts, and brains, eventually came into ownership of a sawmill in Dardan, one of the town’s main employers. Please note, the events of this family’s lives, while vivid and dramatic, do not in themselves make the story remarkable. It is the character, abilities, honesty, and strength of the main characters, and in particular the men, which do so.

The second book, The Signal Flame, features Bo Konar, the elder of Jozef Vinich’s two grandsons. After his father dies, Bo spends his childhood at his grandfather’s side and he learns not only the practical lessons of working a farm and tracking game, but also the wisdom and strength of character only available from someone like Jozef. Bo leaves college after only one semester; the shock of the accidental death of a fellow student with whom he was falling in love, moors him to home. At home in Dardan he begins his career at the sawmill, an operation he will eventually own. Events swirl around him and his family: his father is accidentally killed in a hunting accident in 1949 (when Bo is 8 years old); in the 1960s a flood crashes through the town and Bo acts in a superhuman way, jumping from a bridge into a raging, overflowing river, to save the woman who is pregnant with his niece.

Through it all, the stalwart virtues of honesty, level-headedness, receptiveness, fairness, and worldly wisdom carry the main characters, Jozef and Bo particularly, but also the Catholic priest who provides practical help and succor to the family, and Hannah, Bo’s mother, who grieves the loss of her husband. As a follow-up to 2011’s The Sojourn, The Signal Flame fits supremely well, which is a grand recommendation on its own. It continues the clarity and sturdiness of the prose, the gratifying virtuousness of the main characters, and even the non-essential characters have their full human traits, foibles, beliefs, and skills.

This second book in the trilogy is a worthy entry; it stands on its own if you want to immerse yourself in this part of the story, but my recommendation is to start with the memorable and inspiring (and award-winning) The Sojourn. It’s just a book you should not neglect. And neither is The Signal Flame.