GOODBYE, GOODNESS is a sad but ultimately (sort of) triumphant story
about the weight of personal history and the obligations of the present,
about the relationships that construct our lives while simultaneously
destroying them. Hayward is the great grandson of an eccentric baron of
the gilded age named Finn, a man who built the first roads across the
country, famous for their unearthly glow in the moonlight, the inventor
of the first Sea World, an attraction that would showcase the cities of
the future, and a lover of Annie Oakley, a character who deeply
influenced our ideas of the American frontier. His massive legacy has
ruled the generations after him and Hay's family has been alternating
between ill-conceived plots to shore up the family fortune and great
hemorrhages of waste and abandon, massive purchases quickly forgotten,
drunken fishing trips and even drunker prep school reunions. The novel
opens with Hay recovering from a concussion in a beach house that he has
broken into, having obviously gone through hell but telling the reader
nothing of how he's gotten there. In interconnecting flashbacks we see
the story of his life; his early experiences with his father, his
meeting at Yale of his friends Will and Kimmel, a post college romance
in New York that turns into full time care-taking of an insane woman,
and an eventual overtaking by alcoholism with a crash landing on the
west coast. Exploring the past and the present of a deeply
unconventional family and using episodes taken from Annie Oakley's
actual diary, Brumbaugh illuminates the narrative of a life separated
from normalcy.
