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An elderly man has been bludgeoned to death in his driveway. There seems to be no reason for this violent act; it was not a robbery, and no other motive is apparent. As County Prosecutor Bell Elkins and Sheriff Nick Fogelsong wrestle with trying to solve this mystery, we also hear the story of Lindy Crabtree. At twenty years old she is the sole caretaker for her father, a former coal miner whose mental and physical health is crumbling.When a second man is knifed to death and a knife is missing from the Crabtree kitchen, Lindy worries that her father's illness might have caused him to take a violent turn. Lindy has filled the family basement with rocks, coal, dirt, pieces of wood, and other materials commonly found in a coal mine to comfort her father as his health deteriorates. No one knows her father lives in this dark , dank, and dirty basement. This darkness and twisting, turning, tunneling of mine shaft make a good metaphor for this story. With every piece of information that is dug up, the story tunnels off in a different, unexpected direction.
The book opens with the complications of Bell Elkins' sister Shirley's homecoming. Shirley has been in prison for thirty years for the killing of their abusive father. Shirley is in the midst of her teenaged rebellion, delayed due to her imprisonment. The guilt and anger Elkins feels towards her sister is one piece of the emotional turmoil Bell is going through. Ackers Gap is not a place where people take comfort in sharing their troubles - just the opposite. Bell shoulders the burden and keeps moving forward much like her counterparts in this small town.
Julia Keller's prose is picturesque and filled with the unhurried speech of the south. Close to the end of the book she describes a family as being "not the kind of poor that spread across the area like a leaf blight, infecting houses instead of plants, and human destinies instead of root systems, and that left a constant swath of parts-scavenged cars, mangy animals, scrawny children with stares as deep as graves and twice as final, and elderly relatives who sat all day on the front porch until they too, were subsumed by the ravening misfortune."
Every page resonates with the clear imagery of Appalachia; it is in the characters she has created as well as the place. This book is a powerful portrait of some of the have-nots of our nation in addition to being a compelling mystery with a surprise ending.
§Megan Sweeney is an art teacher at the Tuxedo Park School, an independent school in upstate New York. She eats, sleeps, reads, knits, and occasionally makes her own artwork in the nearby town of Monroe, New York where she lives.
Reviewed by Megan Sweeney, July 2014
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