“Small Animals Caught in Traps” takes place in Disappointment, a fictional Oregon town.

With wry place names like Boring and Boo Boo Lake, Oregon may inspire some writers to situate novels here simply for the melancholia and dysfunction that seem to be embedded in the map.

Perhaps that’s why former Oregon resident C.B. Bernard sets his debut novel, “Small Animals Caught in Traps,” in the fictional town of Disappointment, located in central Oregon.

Once a mill town, Disappointment has begun attracting refugees from city life. But Lewis Yaw and his girlfriend Janey don’t really fit that mold. Rather, they’ve both fled unhappy childhoods on the East Coast. And while both are college-educated, they’ve left any pretensions of upward mobility behind.

This week’s book

“Small Animals Caught in Traps” by C.B. Bernard

Blackstone — 318 pp — $27.99

They marry and try living off the land. Lewis, who had been a boxer in his youth, becomes a seasonal fishing guide along the local river and poaches for food when he has to.

Janey wants to start a family, but Lewis isn’t sure he’s cut out to be a good father. His dad was abusive, and while Lewis has physically left that relationship back in the past, he’s never been able to overcome the depression that’s always colored his worldview. He self-medicates with alcohol to help take the edge off.

But in time, the couple does have a baby girl, Grayling. They raise Grayling unconventionally — Lewis teaches his daughter how to fish and how to box. He teaches her about tenacity and having a tough code to live by. And for a long time, their family is knit together with love.

But it takes an enormous amount of willpower for Lewis to try to reimagine and embody the role of salutary fatherhood. Internally and repeatedly, he coaches himself, “Don’t be that guy.” Meaning to not be like his dad.

There are other stressors in the family’s life, too — from small-town conflict to big-picture philosophical differences. Simply making ends meet is never easy.

The town of Disappointment lives up to its name, and not even the rabbit’s foot Grayling was given on her 10th birthday for good luck is able to ward off bad times.

As hard as he tries to keep things on an even keel, Lewis can’t always hold things together. But as Grayling grows into adolescence, all of those homespun lessons that were imparted by her parents over the years seem to loom larger than the education she’s gotten at school.

As she debates whether even to bother going through with her high school graduation ceremony, her honorary Uncle Fenwick — one of the most thoroughly fleshed-out secondary characters to come out of any book in a long time – encourages her to march.

“We’ve had a surplus of circumstance around here,” he said, “but not nearly enough pomp.”

Despite the reference to small animals in the title, do not mistake this for a tale about minor lives. With precision-tuned character strokes, pitch-perfect dialogue and devastating plot developments, Bernard transforms these scruffy individuals into the flawed heroes of their own lives. This is a novel of consequence.