Fireflies and Zeroes by Liz Larson
Liz Larson‘s debut novel Fireflies and Zeroes (Brandylane Publishers, Inc.) offers a carefully crafted story of suspense as Max, the leader and songwriter of a three-person pop-punk band goes missing, on the eve of their reunion tour in Charlottesville, Virginia and just six months after the explosive racial violence of 12 August, 2017 that has rocked the city and dominated the news. Given that Larson weaves in heartfelt reflections on a once-Confederate city that is hometown to two of the band members, it is apt that a short prologue should launch the novel, taking place in Charlottesville on that terrible August day.It juxtaposes the views of Jason, one of the band’s hometown boys, with those of Tara, the band’s drummer — a woman of color originally from New York — who becomes swallowed up, in Jason’s view, by the same “surge of anger that had overtaken his home.” As Jason tries to make sense of the awful events within the context of his cherished home, Tara decries a town that “hasn’t once owned up to the fact that it was built by slaves, or shed any light on the literal Goddamn skeletons in its closets.” As the two argue, a William Faulkner quote refuses to leave Jason’s head: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
The Show Can’t Go On
The novel covers a week’s time in mid-February 2018 and moves fast. The protagonist is Jason, guitar-player and best friend to Max since early childhood. Max and his younger brother Alex emigrated from Russia with their parents at a very young age. Friendship with Jason helped Max learn English and got both boys through their C’ville childhoods as “inseparable partners in crime.” Chapter one opens as Jason and Tara arrive at an opening party for the band, hosted at a plantation manor (Tara calls out the venue as racist) with five hundred adoring fans. But a niggling worry that their front man Max has not yet arrived overshadows the joy. It’s been a tumultuous year with Max secluding himself after accusations that the band has never offered a love song.Now they’re back with a love song and a reunion tour but Max hasn’t been seen in a week and he’s no longer texting them back. Then his bookish younger brother Alex shows up in his stead, like he’s done before. Alex saves the concert but things move from unsettled to horrific as the party goes wrong. In a messy scuffle obscured by darkness and alcohol, reality becomes clear to Jason, the local police and everyone else. One person is dead. And not only is Max not coming back but this time no one knows where he is and ominous signs suggest he isn’t safe.
In a race against time Jason seeks to find Max, with the analytical support of Alex and the emotional support of Tara. The band’s forty-year-old manager Izzy has gotten wind of the crazy opening night and calls in. In “combat boots and spike-studded jewelry of a high school punk” she’s “never one to be trifled with.” Equally quick to defend and blame the band she must be kept out of a reality that at one point seems to involve ransom notes in Russian. The pace races to a nail-biting climax and ends in a confessional tone true to the iconoclastic pop-punk style that questions everything from authority figures to sexuality.
The Shadow of Unresolved Bloodshed
Larson has lived in Charlottesville, and lovingly dedicates her novel to the town “not for the virtues but despite the faults.” Her choice of title, Fireflies and Zeroes invokes thoughts of the best and the worst of Charlottesville. Jason goes on at length about the joy of catching fireflies on summer nights and the crepe myrtle and gingo trees his mother pointed out to him at a young age. Perhaps we see the worst most clearly in the rawness of the band’s brilliant front man Max as he grapples eloquently with longing and self-doubt over values he does not share with the town. But just as telling is the back-and-forth between Tara and Jason as they examine truth from their different angles. He thinks she is missing nuance and she thinks he is missing the big picture.As we think about the message Larson delivers here, it suggests that hope of resolving our past — most particularly a bloody and divisive war that ended over a century and a half ago but never got resolved — comes with delving into both. Such a novel as Fireflies and Zeroes is an enjoyable and thought-provoking start.
Liz Larson is a Virginia-based fiction author. Despite her “real job” as a physics graduate student, in her heart she’s still a fighty emo kid who loves to write about pop punk, small towns, and the well-intentioned but often destructive choices we make en route to adulthood. Her debut novel, Fireflies and Zeroes is out now!
