The Other by David Guterson

This book has a lot of familiar Northwest woods and Seattle scenes in it. It is the tale of two boys who become friends at a track meet. Their friendship evolves over the years with one of the boys who comes from a wealthy family becoming a hermit on the Olympic peninsula. While at times it is not totally believable, I liked the faithfulness of the friend who continues to visit his hermit as the years go by and in the end receives a surprising bequest some 29 years later. Guterson is a poetic writer and this book evokes the foggy damp green of the woods well. Here is one of my favorite images "... the express (train) had just gone through at high speed a minute or so before and the passengers in it flashing past like kings, queens, and jacks in a thumbed deck of cards, ephemeral as thoughts" p. 47