Without A Soul To Move

Although author William Dewey left Denver to travel the world, he stayed rapt in the city, basing his second novel, Without A Soul To Move, in the middle of a dismal Colorado winter. Struggling through the waning days of a cold February, three loosely connected characters (Wayne, Adam, Howie) are desperate for a sense of normalcy—something that seems to surround them, but is somehow evasive.

Wayne has lived in Denver for six disappointing post-college months. No one has any reason to call him, and the world that he lives in would not be bothered by his absence. With a shrewd emotional detachment, he comes up with an absolute test that will decide whether he should continue living.

Adam owns several music venues in town. He comes from well-known, philanthropic parents, and he has friends who care deeply for him. But after disease ravages his family, he becomes disillusioned, consumed by thoughts of destroying evil and saving the city from the cancers of life.

Howie plays bass for the Unnaturalists, a local band beginning to gain popularity. But not until Howie’s epic meltdown—over a woman, Adrienne—and departure from the band do they finally book a gig at the Bluebird Theater. His pitiful obsession with a dream-life with Adrienne begins to destroy him from the outside in.

Attaching the twenty-/thirty-something protagonists to realistic periphery characters, Dewey creates a framework for each man’s misery. This cast prods the story through the events that smother the three, leading each man to question the premise that governs his life. With a careful ability to describe mundane actions in explicit detail—such as the way an unsure hand trembles before dialing the phone—Dewey unfolds the story through narration that is both conversational and omniscient.

Without A Soul To Move has only been published in New Zealand, where Dewey settled after leaving Colorado—he’s since returned, and will be reading from Without A Soul this Thursday at the Gypsy House Cafe—but it’s a book that should translate anywhere. It offers a rare, honest look at the daily trivialities that make life matter, in a city where young adults flock to turn their backs on the ordinary. Through their interactions with friends and strangers, Wayne, Adam, and Howie get the chance to rationalize and debate the misgivings in each of their lives. All three stumble for the realization that, sometimes, you have to lose a part of yourself before you can become whole.