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Wire to Wire
With its cast of train-hopping, drug-dealing, glue-huffing lowlifes, Scott Sparling's debut--an homage to the American crime novel--chronicles the lives of damaged people doing their meager best and often finding the worst. Wire to Wire assembles a cast of train-hopping, drug-dealing, glue-huffing lowlifes, in a stunning homage to one of our most popular enduring genres―the American crime novel. While riding a freight car through Detroit, Michael Slater suffers a near-fatal accident―a power line to the head. After a questionable recovery and a broken relationship, he abandons his new home in the Arizona desert, though not before leaving a man for dead. Slater returns to Michigan in a busted-up Ford to reunite with an old train-hopping pal, but quickly discovers that the Pleasant Peninsula of his youth is none too pleasant. As Slater’s past catches up with his present―a love triangle, a local drug dealer, the damaged residents of a destitute Northern Michigan town―rock bottom keeps slipping farther away. Three years later, Slater sits in a dark video-editing suite, popping speed like penny candy, attempting to reconcile himself with the unfilmed memories that haunt his screens and his conscience.
376 pages, Paperback
First published May 11, 2011
6 people are currently reading
211 people want to read
About the author
Scott Sparling
5 books10 followersOriginally from Michigan, Scott Sparling lives outside Portland, Oregon, with his wife and son.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
June 5, 2012
Video editor Michael Slater sits in New York, popping speed and watching his life unfold on the screens in front of him. Michael and his best friend, Harp Maitland, were riding the rails some years earlier. Standing on top of a boxcar, Slater saw a power line looming above them. He pushed Maitland to safety, but was hit by the line himself and nearly killed.
Slater will never fully recover, but he makes his way back home to Wolverine, Michigan, on the Northern Peninsula. He discovers that his beloved home town has deteriorated even farther than he has, and before long, he is involved in a relationship with a troubled woman who is the lover of Harp Maitland, the man whose life he saved and who would still prefer that the two of them were back out riding the rails.
Slater is also being pursued by a drug dealer that he fled from in Arizona and his web of problems grows increasingly complex the longer he remains in Wolverine.
Sparling has an obvious love for railroads and for northern Michigan, and he has created here a memorable cast of characters, although none of them is very sympathetic. He has set them in a wonderfully-conceived world that is also very depressing, but the sum total is a very good debut novel that a reader will not soon forget.
Slater will never fully recover, but he makes his way back home to Wolverine, Michigan, on the Northern Peninsula. He discovers that his beloved home town has deteriorated even farther than he has, and before long, he is involved in a relationship with a troubled woman who is the lover of Harp Maitland, the man whose life he saved and who would still prefer that the two of them were back out riding the rails.
Slater is also being pursued by a drug dealer that he fled from in Arizona and his web of problems grows increasingly complex the longer he remains in Wolverine.
Sparling has an obvious love for railroads and for northern Michigan, and he has created here a memorable cast of characters, although none of them is very sympathetic. He has set them in a wonderfully-conceived world that is also very depressing, but the sum total is a very good debut novel that a reader will not soon forget.
August 28, 2011
Awesome. This guy writes like an 18 year old fucks. Careless, angrily, and with an overwhelming sense of disbelief. Difference is you won't mind sleeping in Sparling's wet spot. His prose is spot on, the plot is cohesive, and the characters are a bunch of miserable wrectches with hearts. This book made me want to sniff glue and be a lumberjack.
December 18, 2011
This is a novel populated by drifters, druggies, assholes, and lost souls of characters who are also rather sure of exactly what they want and generally unashamed of taking it. In other words: it's a heck of a lot of fun to read.
Ultimately, this book is Michael Slater's story. He's a bit of a twitchy speed freak with a metal plate in his head thanks to an incident with a power line on a freight train. There are other key ingredients here as well, though: his estranged train riding compatriot, Harp, plays a significant role, along with Harp's glue-addict girlfriend, Lane, and her drug-dealing (among other things generally categorized as shady) brother, Charlie. There are sand dunes, or a place where once there were sand dunes, and a cranky sonofabitch named Dickinson who Slater leaves for dead in the desert. Add a quarter of a million dollars, some dynamite, a lot of booze, the occasional dead body, and some rolling trains. Stir until something big happens. Don't worry; it doesn't take long.
Quotes, in no particular order:
"It was a plan, he told himself. Speed in the afternoon, a little more speed in the early evening, then tie down with a brew or two. Not a great plan, maybe, but a plan all the same."
"The meeting went badly. The Stink brought out the skewer again. He carried it into Charlie's living room and waved it about, red-eyed, like a conductor on PCP. What would Charlie's tiny balls look like on the skewer? The Stink wondered. How long would they need to be roasted? He spoke very loudly. Charlie had heard the routine before, but the skewer still frightened him. Something meaty had left a brown stain on the shank."
"Lane put the last dish on the rack. 'Whose idea was it to stand on top of a boxcar underneath a power line?'
Harp took a drink of coffee. 'We're going to the Sawhorse,' he said. 'Mike and I.' He stood up to go.
'Actually,' Slater said, 'the best part is what the train shows you. In a car or a truck you face forward and see what's coming, but a boxcar makes you look out the side. It's all now, now, and now.'
'Like sex,' Lane said."
"It took him a while to figure out how he felt, and when it came to him, he was surprised. He felt left out. Harp had screwed up mammothly. Without him."
I have to admit somewhere around here: Harp and Slater are exactly my kind of characters. They're fuckups, sure, but they're fuckups with conviction, and ultimately trying to do what they think is right. Sometimes these efforts suffer from narrow vision and sometimes they're foiled by outside forces, but there's something in the honest effort that keeps me cheering them on even through all the wrong turns they make.
Don't go into this book looking for pretty or happy. Expect complications, expect things to get uglier and more uncomfortable than you'd anticipated, and you won't be disappointed. This is a messy storyline with vastly imperfect characters, and that on its own is a pretty darn good reason to read it.
Ultimately, this book is Michael Slater's story. He's a bit of a twitchy speed freak with a metal plate in his head thanks to an incident with a power line on a freight train. There are other key ingredients here as well, though: his estranged train riding compatriot, Harp, plays a significant role, along with Harp's glue-addict girlfriend, Lane, and her drug-dealing (among other things generally categorized as shady) brother, Charlie. There are sand dunes, or a place where once there were sand dunes, and a cranky sonofabitch named Dickinson who Slater leaves for dead in the desert. Add a quarter of a million dollars, some dynamite, a lot of booze, the occasional dead body, and some rolling trains. Stir until something big happens. Don't worry; it doesn't take long.
Quotes, in no particular order:
"It was a plan, he told himself. Speed in the afternoon, a little more speed in the early evening, then tie down with a brew or two. Not a great plan, maybe, but a plan all the same."
"The meeting went badly. The Stink brought out the skewer again. He carried it into Charlie's living room and waved it about, red-eyed, like a conductor on PCP. What would Charlie's tiny balls look like on the skewer? The Stink wondered. How long would they need to be roasted? He spoke very loudly. Charlie had heard the routine before, but the skewer still frightened him. Something meaty had left a brown stain on the shank."
"Lane put the last dish on the rack. 'Whose idea was it to stand on top of a boxcar underneath a power line?'
Harp took a drink of coffee. 'We're going to the Sawhorse,' he said. 'Mike and I.' He stood up to go.
'Actually,' Slater said, 'the best part is what the train shows you. In a car or a truck you face forward and see what's coming, but a boxcar makes you look out the side. It's all now, now, and now.'
'Like sex,' Lane said."
"It took him a while to figure out how he felt, and when it came to him, he was surprised. He felt left out. Harp had screwed up mammothly. Without him."
I have to admit somewhere around here: Harp and Slater are exactly my kind of characters. They're fuckups, sure, but they're fuckups with conviction, and ultimately trying to do what they think is right. Sometimes these efforts suffer from narrow vision and sometimes they're foiled by outside forces, but there's something in the honest effort that keeps me cheering them on even through all the wrong turns they make.
Don't go into this book looking for pretty or happy. Expect complications, expect things to get uglier and more uncomfortable than you'd anticipated, and you won't be disappointed. This is a messy storyline with vastly imperfect characters, and that on its own is a pretty darn good reason to read it.
May 2, 2011
Scott Sparling’s debut novel “Wire To Wire” is a dark panoramic view full of fleeting nightmares and bad memories racing across the electrified brain of Michael Slater. That’s because while riding atop a train through Detroit his head meets a power line that almost kills him. The “electricity used Slater’s body as a raceway, entering at his forehead and shooting through his feet, rearranging the molecules as it went.” After having his skull cut open and surgically retooled, his perspective is changed forever.
A few years later, he’s working as a video editor in New York in a cubicle with nothing to keep him company but speed and the visions of his past that insist on unfolding on the screens of his editing suite over and over and over again.
Slater recalls scenes from the desert when he was trying to live a regular life after recovering from his accident. In no time at all, he is sleeping with someone else’s girl and running from a psycho back to Wolverine, Michigan where he falls in again with his fellow train-hopping friend Harp. Harp’s girlfriend, Lane, is too much of a temptation to pass on and that creates a juicy love triangle. Soon Slater gets pulled into Lane’s brother’s nefarious ways and once again he is running for his life.
The story is classic noir fiction full of drug dealers, crooked cops, and glue-huffing losers. Sparling uses the train as a vehicle for moving the plot and the characters through a story that follows Slater and Harp through Northern Michigan’s bleak wasteland. “There was woe spread all over Northern Michigan. They’d seen plenty on the road into town. Abandoned farmhouses in fields of purple wildflowers. Rusting double-wides with big cars in front. A long stretch of fence posts where no fence remained. And the signs. Stump blasting. Worms for sale. I do drywall. People piecing their lives together.”
The characters are pitiful, but some are sympathetic as well - especially Slater who one feels is always on the verge of doing the right thing but never quite manages to pull it off. Stuff just keeps happening to him.
Murders, train-hopping getaways, and speed-addled lowlifes lurking in every shadow keep the story moving swiftly down the tracks. There is seemingly no place to hide. Slater’s girlfriend Lane sums it up best when she says, “You’re looking for a safe place... But there isn’t any. It’s all a tightwire and you never get to come down. You just get used to it... You just move from wire to wire to wire.”
Beautifully written and chilling prose makes this more than just a crime novel. The meticulous detail of the gritty and unrelenting gloom of the Northern Michigan landscape as well as the gripping scenes of riding the rails lend a persuasive feel to this brilliantly crafted thriller.
A few years later, he’s working as a video editor in New York in a cubicle with nothing to keep him company but speed and the visions of his past that insist on unfolding on the screens of his editing suite over and over and over again.
Slater recalls scenes from the desert when he was trying to live a regular life after recovering from his accident. In no time at all, he is sleeping with someone else’s girl and running from a psycho back to Wolverine, Michigan where he falls in again with his fellow train-hopping friend Harp. Harp’s girlfriend, Lane, is too much of a temptation to pass on and that creates a juicy love triangle. Soon Slater gets pulled into Lane’s brother’s nefarious ways and once again he is running for his life.
The story is classic noir fiction full of drug dealers, crooked cops, and glue-huffing losers. Sparling uses the train as a vehicle for moving the plot and the characters through a story that follows Slater and Harp through Northern Michigan’s bleak wasteland. “There was woe spread all over Northern Michigan. They’d seen plenty on the road into town. Abandoned farmhouses in fields of purple wildflowers. Rusting double-wides with big cars in front. A long stretch of fence posts where no fence remained. And the signs. Stump blasting. Worms for sale. I do drywall. People piecing their lives together.”
The characters are pitiful, but some are sympathetic as well - especially Slater who one feels is always on the verge of doing the right thing but never quite manages to pull it off. Stuff just keeps happening to him.
Murders, train-hopping getaways, and speed-addled lowlifes lurking in every shadow keep the story moving swiftly down the tracks. There is seemingly no place to hide. Slater’s girlfriend Lane sums it up best when she says, “You’re looking for a safe place... But there isn’t any. It’s all a tightwire and you never get to come down. You just get used to it... You just move from wire to wire to wire.”
Beautifully written and chilling prose makes this more than just a crime novel. The meticulous detail of the gritty and unrelenting gloom of the Northern Michigan landscape as well as the gripping scenes of riding the rails lend a persuasive feel to this brilliantly crafted thriller.
November 3, 2011
While Sparling insists that WIRE TO WIRE is not a crime novel, but rather an homage to the crime novel, the novel's strengths are in its genre elements. For all the literary bells and whistles that adorn the narrative, they are distractions from a solid character-driven story at the center.
Sparling does a wonderful job opening the reader up to his world of glue-huffers and boxcar train jumpers, its own sub-culture. The characters are aimless, yet interesting. People rather than archetypes.
If the book has a weakness, it's the framing device that he uses. The story moves back and forth in time between the present and the past, but the story in the present never really takes shape and takes a number of pages. The story in the past is the story, the rest felt like extra. Luckily that story is a strong one and makes it worth the read.
Definitely looking forward to Sparling's next book.
Sparling does a wonderful job opening the reader up to his world of glue-huffers and boxcar train jumpers, its own sub-culture. The characters are aimless, yet interesting. People rather than archetypes.
If the book has a weakness, it's the framing device that he uses. The story moves back and forth in time between the present and the past, but the story in the present never really takes shape and takes a number of pages. The story in the past is the story, the rest felt like extra. Luckily that story is a strong one and makes it worth the read.
Definitely looking forward to Sparling's next book.
September 21, 2011
Appropriate blurbs from Willy Vlautin and Donald Ray Pollack as this is a similar tale of a low life group of outcasts, junkies, murderers, and fools. Shades of Thompson and McCarthy but similar to Kem Nunn in that the fall of the characters is echoed by the squandered potential of the landscape they inhabit. He nails the druggy despair of lower Michigan, I had the outline for novel of druggy lowlifes in Michigan (where I grew up) but now I’m wondering what the point would be (weirdly the author also lives in the town I currently live in). The cleverness of the dialogue also brings to mind Robert Stone and Elmore Leonard. The energy and fluency of the prose enervates what would be an endlessly depressing story… Beautiful packaging by Tin House also.
April 25, 2012
Scott Sparling's WIRE TO WIRE further clarified for me a couple of the things that draw me into a book. The first I've known for a long time. I crave surprise. It's here in spades. But I also have noticed lately that awareness of the beauty or specificity of language has become more important to me as well. Sparling's descriptions seem new, unique, and perfectly crafted.
With MEMENTO-like flashbacks in time, we wander willingly into Michael Slater's sometimes horrific lifeline following him until we think we know the answer.
Intriguing, disturbing, and perfectly balanced, WIRE TO WIRE may change the way you look at the world and your place in it. Read it.
With MEMENTO-like flashbacks in time, we wander willingly into Michael Slater's sometimes horrific lifeline following him until we think we know the answer.
Intriguing, disturbing, and perfectly balanced, WIRE TO WIRE may change the way you look at the world and your place in it. Read it.
November 15, 2011
fantastic rollicking novel of young people in the usa with nothing really to live for, nothing but money, sex, love, drugs, and moving. from a new series from Tin House called New Voice.
Read
June 5, 2023I think this was just not for me. I don't like books where people just make bad decision after bad decision. Sex, drugs and lonliness, no one is having fun. Also there wasn't like, a lot of plot? So. Not for me.
(read for Michigan setting.)
(read for Michigan setting.)
August 13, 2017
The descriptions of hopping trains are vivd and real, but I had trouble keeping the characters and timelines straight.
June 7, 2015
I'm going to be honest and say I only bought this book because it took place in Michigan, and I live in Michigan as well.
Apparently Michigan wasn't a big enough appeal for me in this book. I found myself reading it, but not really grasping anything I was reading. It was definitely not a deep read for me. I didn't grasp anything about the screens or the railroad aspect of things because I don't know anything about editing films or railroad cars.
However, even though I didn't understand the general gist of things, the book was still interesting.
The characters, and how they interacted, was very interesting. I enjoyed seeing all the complications arise and see how they intricately got resolved.
Unfortunately, I finished reading this book and still didn't realize what it was about. It seems like a TV show. Just people interacting with each other causing problems, but there was no true point to it, so if somebody wants to help me out and kind of explain the plot of this book that'd be great because currently it was just a bunch of people interacting to me; nothing really meaningful.
Apparently Michigan wasn't a big enough appeal for me in this book. I found myself reading it, but not really grasping anything I was reading. It was definitely not a deep read for me. I didn't grasp anything about the screens or the railroad aspect of things because I don't know anything about editing films or railroad cars.
However, even though I didn't understand the general gist of things, the book was still interesting.
The characters, and how they interacted, was very interesting. I enjoyed seeing all the complications arise and see how they intricately got resolved.
Unfortunately, I finished reading this book and still didn't realize what it was about. It seems like a TV show. Just people interacting with each other causing problems, but there was no true point to it, so if somebody wants to help me out and kind of explain the plot of this book that'd be great because currently it was just a bunch of people interacting to me; nothing really meaningful.
May 20, 2013
I was really dissapointed with this book, my husband and I had seen a review in the local paper on it because the author is from our state (Michigan.) We love detective/crime stories, and we are huge train fans.... so this seemed like a perfect fit. When a book jumps around and is really hard to follow I can usually over look it, and when there is an excessive amount of sex and violence I can usually over look it, but both together made this book take more effort to read than I care to give. Perhaps if I hadn't paid full price I wouldn' of minded so much. I did read the whole thing, (unlike my husband who quit after the first chapter) but was left feeling like it was time and money I'll never get back.
January 16, 2012
I found this book to be a little hard to follow at first but as I read it I found it hard to put down.
Wire to wire is about this gentle man who starts out with his friend as a train hopper and one day while riding on the top of one of the cars with his friend finds himself if a shocking spot as he saves his friend from loosing his head by a low hanging electric wire and instead has it hit him right smack in the head sending him to the hospital to try and save his life.
through out the story he is re-sighting his memories of his life as he sees them replaying on the silver screen at his new job of film editing
I will leave you to read the book to find out what he remembers
Wire to wire is about this gentle man who starts out with his friend as a train hopper and one day while riding on the top of one of the cars with his friend finds himself if a shocking spot as he saves his friend from loosing his head by a low hanging electric wire and instead has it hit him right smack in the head sending him to the hospital to try and save his life.
through out the story he is re-sighting his memories of his life as he sees them replaying on the silver screen at his new job of film editing
I will leave you to read the book to find out what he remembers
April 4, 2013
An exciting and engaging book that drew me in immediately. The characters seem so real, and despite the fact that they are all so obviously flawed from the get-go -- drugs, crime, betrayal -- you cannot help but care about them, back them, stay with them so you find out what happens to them. Sparling's writing is fresh and fast, and as someone with a deep connection to Michigan and especially the area that Wire to Wire is set in, I felt like I was right there all along, walking through the town streets, gazing out over the lake, listening to seedy classic rock cover bands and downing cheap beers in the local watering hole. Fantastic. This one is getting shared. A lot.
December 10, 2012
This is a well written book about Michael Slater and the tale of his life. Throughout the story, we wind out about how he arrived to where he is at now. This includes a love triangle, drug dealers, cops and train hopping. I gave it 2 stars not because of the writing or content (I have no complaint about how it was written)but because I just did not like the book. It is not something the I found particularly interesting to read and it just did not catch my attention.
I won this book in a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.
I won this book in a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.
July 9, 2012
I found Wire to Wire to be an interesting premise however, it was a little difficult to read. The main character Slater suffers from a rare and unique injury, which he suffered while jumping freight trains. A whole bunch of drugs, women, and violence prevents him from leading a normal life.
My issue with the book is that it is written in a style that lacked coherence as I was constantly trying to figure out who the author was talking about. It’s a shame cause I always enjoy a good junky lowlife crime story.
My issue with the book is that it is written in a style that lacked coherence as I was constantly trying to figure out who the author was talking about. It’s a shame cause I always enjoy a good junky lowlife crime story.
July 11, 2012
I picked the book up because of the imprint: "A Tin House New Voice." Reminded me a lot of early Robert Stone, circa Dog Soldiers and Hall of Mirrors. The prose was beautiful, but I'd have to say author Scott Sparling doesn't know how to cobble it together into a cohesive whole. The main character has had brain surgery so possibly the disjointedness was a deliberate author choice, meant to immerse the reader in the protagonist's inner landscape, in whihc case Bravo. Still. Very hard to figure out what exactly the plot was.
January 7, 2014
If Quentin Tarantino were to make a movie about riding freight trains and small town politics and corruption, it's probably resemble this book (but with fewer gruesome deaths).
Interesting characters, fantastic dialogue, and a few, neat little nuggets about Michigan history and landmarks help to make this an enjoyable read.
Crude language and potential triggers will be a turn-off for some readers.
Interesting characters, fantastic dialogue, and a few, neat little nuggets about Michigan history and landmarks help to make this an enjoyable read.
Crude language and potential triggers will be a turn-off for some readers.
July 3, 2011
I'm only about a third of the way through, but Scott Sparling's writing reads at an exhilarating pace, much like the trains being hopped in this excellent debut. He switches masterfully between locations and points of view, delivering a fast-paced frolic of a novel that's both literary and adrenaline packed--a difficult feat indeed.
February 26, 2024
Though driven by the impulses of this novel's pair of freight-hopping main characters, Wire to Wire is fueled by tension. The specter of imminent disaster hangs over Harp and Slater, as they follow their desires--on and off boxcars, and in and out of the same woman's bed. Murder, drugs, and the gritty terrain of 1980s Michigan add to the unsettling (but also thrilling) atmosphere.
August 28, 2012
Sparling's novel has most of the elements of a so-macabre-it's-funny film by the Coen brothers. The economic picture he paints of Northern Michigan unsettled me but the details about freight trains, ferries, and glue-sniffing were interesting.
February 12, 2012
I disliked this book enough that I didn't even finish the book. I did not like any of the characters and decided not to waste my time finishing the book as I really didn't care how it ended.
September 5, 2011
Makes you think
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