Maxwell William Devore

Maxwell William Devore is a retired computer-industry magnate whose immense fortune and longstanding habit of pursuing whatever he wants make him a powerful presence in the TR. Before he enters the story in person, local knowledge frames him as both a distant patriarch and a determined threat: he has wealth on a scale almost no one in the lakes region can match, and he is seeking custody of his granddaughter, Kyra.

Identity and Background

Devore built his fortune during the computer revolution. He began in the era when memory was stored on magnetic tape and the UNIVAC filled a warehouse; he knew COBOL and FORTRAN, and understood the field well enough to recognize that its growth would eventually outrun his own ability to keep pace. Rather than withdraw, he hired the expertise he needed to keep expanding. He retired to Palm Springs in the late eighties.

His company, Visions, developed programs that could transfer hard copy onto floppy disks almost instantaneously, graphic-imaging software that became an industry standard, and Pixel Easel, a program that let laptop users paint with a mouse. Devore had not invented those later products himself; his achievement was recognizing their potential and employing the people who could create them. He held dozens of patents and co-held hundreds more. His reported wealth, estimated at roughly six hundred million dollars, varied with technology-stock prices.

Reputation and Temperament

The TR’s reputation of Devore is a mixture of resentment, folklore, and fear. He is described as crusty and unpleasant, and as eccentric, but local gossip about successful people is acknowledged to grow extravagant in the telling. The contrast between that caricature and the concrete scale of his wealth is important: even amid the town’s jokes and rumors, his resources are real, and his family’s circumstances invite questions about how he uses them.

Bill Dean gives Mike Noonan a more pointed account of Devore’s character, comparing him to Howard Hughes in his pursuit of whatever he decides he wants. According to Bill, Devore never rests until the desired thing is under his control; the determination was already apparent when he was a boy. Bill recounts a story from around 1923: Devore broke into Scant Larribee’s tack shed to take a Flexible Flyer sled that had been given to Scant’s son. He cut both hands on broken glass but got the sled, and was later found sliding down Sugar Maple Hill with his hands held against his chest, blood soaking his mittens and snowsuit. Bill presents this particular tale as reliable because his father told it, while acknowledging that many other childhood stories about Devore circulate and may not be true.

Family Conflict and Custody

Devore’s connection to the TR is not merely local celebrity or ownership of vast wealth. Mattie’s short-lived marriage to his son has linked her and her daughter Kyra to him, although Mike initially doubts that the connection is strong enough to explain their poverty: Mattie and Kyra live in a rusty double-wide trailer, and Mattie wears inexpensive, practical clothes. The disparity between Devore’s fortune and the family’s modest circumstances sharpens the question of what he intends to do with that connection.

Bill explains that Devore refused to attend his son’s wedding but came to the funeral and had remained in the area since. He had not wanted anything to do with Mattie, Bill says, but he wants the child. By the time Mike hears this, the custody process is already well advanced: a hearing in Castle County Superior Court may take place later that month or the next, and the judge could decide then or postpone a ruling until fall. Bill considers the outcome effectively settled against Mattie, predicting that Kyra will grow up in California. His certainty makes Devore’s money and will more than personal traits; together they form the looming pressure behind a legal fight whose consequences will determine where Kyra lives.

Entrance and Narrative Role

Devore first announces himself to Mike by telephone. After a pause, an elderly, raspy voice asks for Noonan, identifies itself simply as Devore, and then clarifies the name as Max Devore. The brief exchange gives the wealthy man a direct but controlled entrance: before Mike can establish what the caller wants, the name itself carries the weight of the local stories and the custody threat already described to him.

In these early scenes, Devore is defined less by a full account of his private life than by the reach of his decisions. His technological success rests on recognizing opportunities and acquiring the talent to realize them; Bill’s childhood anecdote casts the same unyielding appetite in personal terms, as a boy willing to bleed for a sled. The custody dispute brings those strands into focus. A man accustomed to turning wealth and determination toward what he wants now seeks control over his granddaughter’s future, while Mattie and Kyra face the prospect that the court will send the child far from the TR.