“NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO PANIC” by Kevin Wilson (Ecco, 256 pages, $28).
“We were responsible for one of the weirdest mysteries in American pop culture,” admits Frankie, the protagonist and narrator of Sewanee, Tennessee, author Kevin Wilson’s latest novel, “Now Is Not the Time To Panic.”
In the summer of 1996, 16-year-old Frankie meets Zeke, who is new to their small town of Coalfield, Tennessee. The two misfits bond over their dysfunctional dads, both of whom have abandoned their families, and their mutual creativity. Frankie is a writer, working on her first novel — a dark twist on the Nancy Drew books she loves. Zeke illustrates comic books and has big ambitions: “‘I want to be an artist,'” he told me, like we were both admitting that we weren’t human.”
Soon Frankie and Zeke decide to collaborate on a poster. Much to her surprise, Frankie comes up with the words almost immediately: The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us. “There was this little voice in my head,” she explains, “and it was telling me what to write down. And I knew that this little voice, this tiny, insistent voice, was not God and it wasn’t some muse and it wasn’t anyone in the world except for me.”
Zeke provides a suitably edgy illustration. And they top it all off with a sprinkling of their own blood — but no signatures. Frankie has access to a copier, so they make hundreds of copies with which they proceed to blanket every conceivable surface of their town, all while making sure no one is looking.