“BOMB ISLAND” by Stephen Hundley (Hub City Press, 207 pages, $26).
Stephen Hundley, author of the story collection “The Aliens Will Come to Georgia First,” continues the theme of writing about Georgia in his debut novel, “Bomb Island.” Filled to the brim with quirky characters with even quirkier names — and, yes, an actual bomb — as well as a live tiger, “Bomb Island” does not disappoint when it comes to creating tense situations. In fact, it opens with a close encounter between Fish, the main character, and the tiger, whose name is Sugar. But before delving into that, an introduction to the cast is in order.
Fish is a 14-year-old boy whose house in Atlanta caught fire when he was a child. His mother, Sara, moved him out to Bomb Island, a three-mile stretch of sand off the coast of fictional Royals, Georgia, where they joined a commune. The island’s name comes from an unexploded bomb that was accidentally dropped offshore in the 1950s and remains in the water, exploited as a tourist attraction.
Fish’s mother is now gone, and most of the original community has dwindled or left the island to return to a different, less primitive way of living. Whistle, an old woman known as the “mother-sage,” is the organizer of the commune and perhaps the only member who still believes in its power. The only other people living full-time on the island are Nutzo, an old man who is missing, and Reef, a younger man who occasionally acts as a father figure to Fish.
The mainland town of Royals is seen by Reef’s girlfriend, Darlin, as “a shrunken, possibly evil place. No one was from Royals. It seemed that people only fell there from some other, higher place.” Darlin has been illegally living in her grandfather’s house in Royals, but she’s ready to move. She hopes Reef will go with her to Atlanta. The novel’s only other primary character is Celia, a teenager a few years older than Fish who is staying with her father, Derbier, in Royals before she’s set to return to her mom’s house in Savannah.