Suspenseful Novel: The Painter by Peter Heller

Peter Heller is a master storyteller using spare language to tell tales that draw the reader in, savoring each page, wanting more. The Painter is a novel that keeps you turning the pages.

Jim Stegner is the painter. He's a big man, tall with a bushy beard, who loves to do two things: fish and paint.

Set in Colorado and New Mexico where the painter travels, crisscrossing back and forth in this story, the landscape is vividly painted for the reader in words.

The painter lives in his head as well as his scenic world, reliving the past and his regrets while working to stay alive in his present.

Jim Stegner, the main character in The Painter, has a past that he's not exactly proud of. He killed a man and served time in prison for a remark the man made about Stegner's daughter.

This fact along with circumstances that arise keep Stegner in a cycle of violence that makes you nod your head yes and shake your head no while reading this gripping novel.

The beautiful scenery of the region plays off the dangerous path Jim Stegner takes throughout this book.

I first read Heller's novel The Dog Stars and was hooked. I knew I'd want to read anything else he wrote (well, any other novels; he's written some nonfiction books that I haven't checked out yet).

The Dog Stars is set in the future, which is not the type of book I would normally spend my time on, but the characters were so real and came alive in Heller's writing that I was able to quickly overlook this small detail.

What I mean is: you get this pressure, this internal pressure that builds like a swelling lake and you paint.

It's all you want to do, all you know how to do. And if you focus in the right way, a way you had to learn, you let yourself go.

When I read an exceptional book, I always like to check out the author to find out what else they've written and to satisfy my nosy streak.

Peter Heller's website provides just that. His body of work includes two novels:

• The Dog Stars
• The Painter

He has also authored the following nonfiction books:

• Kook, What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave
• The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals
• Hell or High Water, Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo River

Peter Heller lives in Denver, Colorado and writes for NPR, Outside Magazine, Men's Journal. and National Geographic Adventure.