Why is Chris Bohjalian not better known in the UK?

A care parcel arrived from Rhode Island arrived this morning - a regular, welcome event - containing books, as it always does, and a Boston Celtics 2008 NBA Champions T-Shirt for Paddy, my six-year-old son.

Paddy was very excited and immediately ran around the house asking everyone who would give him time of day who their favourite basketball team was. In for a penny, in for a pound: Patriots, Red Sox... "Celtics, sure why not?" I told him, although I do not follow basketball and do not intend to start now. He was immensely pleased. 

But I was excited too - although perhaps not as excited - as the parcel contained an advance reader proof of Chris Bohjalian's eleventh novel,  Skeletons at the Feast, sourced, I suspect, from the delightful Island Books where my cousin-in-law Molly works.

I first discovered Bohjalian during a US trip in late 1997, rooting through several boxes of used books in the house in Newport that Molly shared with my cousin Olivier, and from where they ran their used book business. I found Water Witches, an early Bohjalian novel set in rural Vermont where environmentally minded locals battled ski resort developers. I am not entirely sure whether the book confirmed or provoked for fascination and love for rural New England. But it all started around that time. Water Witches was thought-provoking and enchanting.

A day or so later, I returned to the boxes and came up with Midwives, the novel that a year later was to make Bohjalian's name when it was picked up by Oprah's book club. I take a peculiar pleasure from "discovering" Bohjalian before Oprah - just as I did with finding RJ Ellory and A Quiet Belief in Angels months before Richard and Judy made that a UK bestseller, although I readily concede that the UK's king and queen of literature have had somewhat more influence on the development of his career than Material Witness.

But it was easy to see what Oprah and her team saw in Midwives, a thoroughly engaging, emotional novel dealing in a universal theme that has served well writers as disparate as Thomas Hardy and Harlan Coben: what happens to people when their lives take unexpected turns, usually for the worse. It also marked Bohjalian out as a rare male author who can really write great female lead characters.

Binding all these books together is an extraordinary sense of place. Bohjalian, a transplanted New Yorker, has a wonderful grasp of rural New England: the contrast between the extremes of weather and nature and the quiet conservative civilisation of communities that are quite distinct from the US of broad overseas perception. 

I tend to view his books as existing in a (very loose) New England literary community that also includes, among others, Alice Hoffman, Anita Shreve, Richard Russo and John Irving.

What these four have in common is a profile here in the UK, particularly for Irving and Shreve.

For some reason Chris Bohjalian has not managed the transatlantic translation.  Looking at Amazon and other sources it appears to me that he doesn't even have a publisher here. Or if he does they're not doing much of a job, as I don't think I've ever come across a book in a store. I've had to rely on the parcels from RI and the occasional visit to the US where I've picked up the latest.

There is a great opportunity for an enterprising publisher somewhere here.

I think so far, I have read seven or eight of the books, missing some of the early ones. But Skeletons at the Feast is a rare treat for the upcoming holiday season, and I thoroughly look forward to it.