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The Cure
By Athol Dickson
Bethany House, 2007. 334 pages.
Reviewed by Michael Wilt
 Something odd is happening in the costal town of Dublin, Maine. The town’s homeless population, usually a manageable handful of individuals, has begun to grow as more and more indigent alcoholics from “away” converge upon the town. Unbeknownst to the town’s leaders, rumors spreading among the homeless have it that the town is the home of a miracle cure for alcoholism. It is enough to draw people from hundreds of miles away.
Among those people is Riley Keep. Riley is himself a Dubliner. Once a respected minister, missionary, and college professor, Riley fell on hard times after his return from several years of mission work among an indigenous population in Brazil. He took to drink in a serious way, so much so that he joined the stream of under-the-radar homeless and left his wife, Hope, and daughter, Bree, back in Dublin, better off with him gone.
Three years later Riley hears the rumors of a cure in Dublin and makes his way north again to find out more. His appearance so changed that he is unrecognizable, Riley slips back into town and takes up residence in the local homeless shelter run by relative newcomer Willa Newdale. His wife is now the mayor of Dublin and their daughter, now sixteen, is coming of age. Local politics are dominated by the richer members of the community, but all are concerned about the influx of homeless and the loss of tourism evidenced by the shuttered downtown storefronts.
Against this grim background, Riley finds himself on the receiving end of an envelope containing a note and a powdered substance. The note includes the formula for the powder and claims that it will cure alcoholics; but “if they ever drink again, the urge will return stronger than ever.” He takes a dose and it works, and he shares it with several other homeless alcoholics. But then Willa goes missing and is presumed to have been murdered, the prime suspect being the anonymous homeless man who had been seen sharing a white powder with several other of the homeless in the shelter.
In the story that unfolds from this point, Riley reveals his identity to Hope and then tries, secretly, to get the formula into the hands of a pharmaceutical company that could make it widely available. Good intentions, though, pave the road to hell, and author Athol Dickson has written a tale that is more about suspense and facing up to life’s challenges than it is about neatly tied knots and happy endings. Hampered by naiveté and the need for anonymity, Riley’s plan is bound to fail even as rumors about the cure continue to spread and homeless continue to besiege the town.
The resolution of the story takes the reader back to Brazil and the events that led to Riley’s dissolution; it takes the reader, too, to the heart of addiction and the real cure that resides in something other than white powder.
Athol Dickson has followed his award-winning River Rising with a suspenseful novel that engages many social, religious, and business issues of our day. With a sense of inevitability that is never predictable, this page-turner’s solid characters carry us through as they grapple with the best and the worst that humanity has to offer.
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