“A Wanted Man”: Transgender as Outlaw in Elizabeth Ruth’s Smoke

Abstract

Elizabeth Ruth’s second novel Smoke (2005) does not fit the generic category of crime fiction per se; rather, her work is representative of a growing number of queer fictions that self-consciously play upon the multiple resonances of the outlaw. Making extensive use of the hermeneutic code, the text operates much like detective fiction, accumulating clues for the reader and the protagonist to decipher. Cultural insiders who understand the rules of the game will recognise precisely what type of outlaw is at stake at a relatively early stage. Set in the village of Smoke in the tobacco-growing region of south-western Ontario in 1958–1959, the narrative revolves around teenaged protagonist Buster McFiddie, disfigured for life in a fire, and the ageing Doctor John Gray, who becomes Buster’s mentor. To distract Buster from the physical and psychological pain of his injuries, Doc John tells him thrilling stories about the Purple Gang and other Detroit mobsters that he claims to recall from his youth in the 1920s and early 1930s. When their region becomes the target for a series of daring daylight robberies, some villagers suspect Buster is the culprit, and Buster in turn suspects the doctor. And there is no smoke without fire, although Doc John’s secret is not quite what Buster expects. The text is coded to be legible to the attentive reader, long before Buster uncovers the evidence for himself: John Gray, happily married to Alice for almost 25 years, is transgendered¹ — which in this particular historical time and place “makes him a wanted man” (Ruth 2005: 253).