Once again I have to ask: Peter Heller, where are you going with this?

I picked up his book Burn from the library early in the week and once I started reading it I couldn’t put it down. I’m having some trouble right now with excessive edema in my legs, so sitting up for periods longer than the half hour I usually dedicate to eating a meal can be problematic in terms of extra swell and knee pain. I kept turning the pages on this one for another half hour or more in every instance, because I so wanted to know what came next. But I never found out…despite finishing the book.

Jess and Storey have been friends since childhood, growing up as close-by neighbors in rural Vermont. They still meet up every year (Jess having moved to Colorado) for a few weeks of hiking, camping, and hunting in various wilderness areas of the upper northern states; this year, they chose moose hunting in the middle of Maine. Jess is particularly glad of this year’s trip; his wife left him and he needs the distraction and the away time with his friend.

There has been a lot of rash talk on the news from secessionist groups in Maine and a few surrounding states about leaving the union, but the guys figure this is something that will work itself out in the courts. That’s until they emerge from their vacation off the grid to replenish their provisions and buy a tank of gas, only to discover that the town they chose to visit has been decimated. Unlike when a wildfire passes through, leaving some houses partially or wholly standing amongst the devastation, the force behind this act was concentrated and deliberate; although a few outhouses and sheds remain, every single house in the town is burnt down to its foundations. The implied savagery is bewildering and disturbing.

The strangest part of it is there are few bodies—they have discovered just four out of a population of more than 2700—and no live people left in the town, but for some reason all the boats docked by the nearby lake are pristine and untouched. There is no cell phone reception, no radio reception, nothing to tell them what happened here, but it’s plain that the talk of secession has escalated into a real and frightening battle. They have no idea who is “winning”—secessionists or U.S. military (or could Canada be involved?)—or how far the devastation stretches, so they decide to figure out a route to get back home (Storey has a wife and two daughters in Vermont), scavenging food from the lockers in the boats, camping under cover in the woods, and dodging human contact after they discover that the new world order is to shoot first and ask no questions. Then something happens that interferes with this plan and changes their whole trajectory.

Up to this point, I was breathless with the need to keep reading. But then the book goes off into a lot of flashbacks into Jess’s teen years and, while interesting, it didn’t further the story at all. It also seemed strangely inappropriate that he would be sitting around reminiscing about this in the midst of the disconnect the two friends are experiencing from the present-day world.

I should also add that the book, as is usual with Heller’s writing, is a poetic and passionate ode to both nature and human emotion, which I always appreciate. I was enthralled by both the possibilities and the story-telling; I kept waiting for progress, for some kind of reveal, but we just kept circling around the same information—we don’t know what’s happening or who we can trust, we don’t know what to do about it, we need to go home. After the event that changes their focus, the story was still compelling until I turned a page after a particularly dramatic scene to discover that it was the last page. What?!

I honestly don’t know what Heller is doing. I do understand some of the statements he was attempting to make—the pondering over human nature and friendship, the disbelief and dismay at the violent divisions over things that seem small but accumulate into a reason for war, but…I want to know how it ends! This is the second of his books that has simply stopped in what I would consider mid-story with no resolution. It is a beautifully written story, but…what happens? Will there be a sequel? Or is that it? As someone similarly frustrated said on Goodreads, Gripping? yes. Satisfying? no.

I don’t know whether to say to read it anyway for what it does offer, or to be outraged by what has been omitted. It was too good to call it a waste of time, but…I’d love to know other reactions to its abrupt full stop.