I came to Madison as a transfer student in 1979. I moved into a studio apartment on Doty Street. Because I arrived as a junior and didn’t know anybody in town it was hard to find friends.
Getting established here was a long, hard slog. But it worked out eventually. I ended up marrying a native Madisonian, so I got my green card. And after trying other things, I settled into a nice cozy job with the city. That went along great for eight years until about 35,000 of my friends and neighbors told me they thought I should move on to something else.
Nonetheless, I didn’t take it personally. Well, actually, I did take it personally as it was my name on the ballot. But I got over it. Sort of. Madison is home.
Which brings me to local author Ritt Deitz’ new novel, Settle Down.
Deitz, an east sider, is Distinguished Teaching Faculty in the UW-Madison Department of French and Italian, where he has taught since 2000. But he grew up in northern Kentucky and, after graduating from the University of Virginia, moved to Madison with a band called Isle of Dogs to, as he explains it, “play original music and see what it would be like to live with friends in a creative little town where we wouldn’t fall through the cracks.”
After the band broke up he earned a Ph.D. in French, but left for a few years to teach at UNC-Wilmington, on the tenure track. “I left the profession to bring my growing little family back here, to be closer to my wife’s family and mine, too, and ended up back in academia a couple of years later,” he explains.
And those experiences provide much of the material for his first novel. His protagonist, Kenny McLuher, grew up in Madison in the 1970s, but went away to college at (you guessed it) the University of Virginia, sprouting some roots in the South, where part of his family still lives. Most of the action takes place as Kenny returns to Madison without a clear plan for what he’ll do with his liberal arts education or where he’ll build a life. Sound familiar to anybody?
He takes a part-time job in catering to make ends meet while he tries to figure out what to do next, torn between the vastly different cultures of Madison and the South. There are the inevitable hook ups and furtive advances and retreats with a couple of young women. Nothing in Kenny’s life is settled in these pages.
Madison plays a starring role in this book. Local readers will recognize the street names, the bars and the theaters. Willy Street, Mickey’s Tavern, the St. Vincent de Paul, the Yahara River and more east side haunts show up in these pages. And the footloose and sometimes eccentric characters might feel like your friends and neighbors — but not the ones who took away your city job.
The book moves along briskly and the characters are interesting and relatable, but it’s the arc of the story that will hit close to home for a lot of us. Deitz captures that confusing, scary and exhilarating period of life when, like getting tossed into the deep end of the pool, all of a sudden you’re an adult. The responsibilities start knocking at your (parents’) door and you’re not sure you’re ready to answer. But you get the feeling you’d better figure it out, and fast.
The story has some quirky aspects. Kenny has an innate talent for putting people to sleep, Abraham Lincoln keeps showing up and there’s a mysterious red-headed girl. If those loose ends were tied up by the book’s end, it escaped my notice. The tidy side of my brain wants all the questions answered.
Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed Settle Down. Deitz has written a story about how a place shapes a person’s identity, values, politics, language and even what they eat. His young characters are searching for a place to establish roots, aware that that first choice is like an opening paragraph that will give direction to the story of their lives.
A lot of Madisonians will see themselves in this book. Like his characters, on the way to someplace else, we settled down (but didn’t “settle”) right here.
Deitz is holding a book release party at the Harmony Bar on Thursday, Sept.18, at 6:30 p.m. There will be food and music. And on Wednesday, Oct. 1, he’ll be in conversation with Doug Moe at the Mystery To Me book shop on Monroe Street. That event kicks off at 6 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public, though seating is limited.
And has Deitz settled down now? “Yes,” he tells me, despite possessing stationery that identifies him as Col. Ritt Deitz of the Honorary Order of Kentucky Colonels. “I have pretty fully settled here. I plan to stay here after I retire. One of our children lives here, and he and his family live within walking distance. People in my family tend not to leave the younger members after retirement — since those younger members are the ones who can do things like move your refrigerator or help you repair your staircase.”
Free help with household projects. That’s one of the best reasons to settle down in a place that I’ve ever heard.
A version of this piece originally appeared in Isthmus.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 