LDS author Douglas Thayer's novel of teen’s fight to survive avalanche

The late Douglas Thayer, a BYU English professor who died in 2017 at 88, penned some pretty good books, including a memoir of his boyhood in Provo, “Hooligan,” and the novel, “The Treehouse,” a well-written but bleak-to-a-fault novel of a Mormon youth’s teen years, mission to Germany, a horrific stint in the Korean War, and his post-war life.

Thayer is a top-tier Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints novelist out there. His final novel, “Will Wonders Ever Cease: A Hopeful Novel for Mormon Mothers and Their Teenage Sons” (Zarahemla Books, 2014), is a good read that mixes an adventure with the protagonist’s stream-of-consciousness thinking as he works to avoid peril and death.

The plot involves Kyle Hooper, 15-year-old Mormon boy in Colorado who takes off in a Suburban to go skiing without his parents’ permission. Almost abruptly, Kyle’s knocked unconscious and his vehicle carried away by a massive snow avalanche.

He comes to several hours later alive thanks to the strength of the Suburban, fortified years earlier by his late grandfather. Kyle is deeply buried in snow, but lucky enough to have landed close to a stream under the avalanche. That allows him to have oxygen. Without a cell phone — it’s smashed — but a car with battery power and some food and drink, he struggles through several days trying desperately to survive and dig himself out.

Kyle is a well-developed character of Thayer’s and the reader will enjoy following along with his ingenious and courageous efforts to save himself from what looks like a long, prolonged and certain death. Mixed in with the survival efforts in this slim novel are this typical but charismatic teen’s thoughts, which run the gamut from girls, church, testimony, his very religious mother, his remote father, his less religious but very talented grandfather, a brother, Trace, who died recently, family, his best friends, and musings about how friends and family are taking his ordeal.

In one emotional scene, Kyle turns on the Suburban’s radio and learns he’s been given up for dead, and retrieval efforts won’t resume until spring.

Within these thoughts, three characters are well-formed by Thayer, an author in his 80s. Kyle’s mother, Lucille, who is originally perceived as a Mormon scold but is revealed to be refreshingly progressive on issues such as homosexuality and premarital pregnancy, and possessed of a strong will, his Grandpa Hooper, whose legacy of common sense and handyman’s know-how is used to great advantage by Kyle, and his late brother, Trace, whose last months alive Kyle recalls as he endures his own struggle to survive.

About the only thing I don’t like about this novel is the bland title, which seems more suitable for self-help or inspirational genres. But it’s a good read, compelling and thought-provoking and readers — drawn into Kyle’s plight — won’t be able to put the book down in the final pages.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardNET in 2014.