Nightwoods by Charles Frazier

Three separate events make up the backstory to Nightwoods: one horrific night for Luce just after graduating from high school; the murder of Luce's sister Lily by her dirtbag of a husband; the death of old man Subblefield who owns the decaying old hotel where Luce works as the sole caretaker. The time is early 1960s in the North Carolina mountains.

That horrific night was the catalyst for Luce to turn her back on the world and live a near monastic life of solitude and near silence in the mountains. Lily and Luce were raised (a term more ironic than accurate) by a couple of young narcissists for too young to be having children. Their mom just took off and their father was entirely disinterested. The death of Lily means that Luce is the sole surviving relative of Lily's preschool twins that DCFS drops off on Luce's doorstep. Now Luce doesn't really like kids, but she will love them despite the state's doctors calling them feebleminded, and being told not to turn her back on them, to hide the matches, and don't let them near chickens. These kids have been scarred and while Luce wants to know how and why, she is willing to let the kids warm to her on their own terms.

Lily's killer, Bud, beats the charge in the state court in Raleigh and decides to seek a new life as a bootlegger and dealer at the far end of the state. As luck would have it, he ends up in the town near where Luce is delicately and decently trying to bring the children out of their trauma-induced shell. Old man Stubblefield left the old lodge, a rundown bar, some bottom land near the lake, and plenty of unpaid taxes to his grandson who, once he learns his way around, takes a liking to Luce and respectfully tries to court her while attempting to gain some acceptance by the children who watch silently while rocking on the lodge's porch or while building fires or breaking chicken's legs.

Bud is sure that Lily somehow got some money of his to Luce or into the kid's possessions and fueled by booze, starts to make his play. But once he has broken in the lodge to look, he is surprised by the children. Startled by seeing Bud, and fearing for their own well being (they must've seen Bud kill their mother), they pack up necessities like okra, matches and kindling, some fruit and peanut butter, borrow a neighbor's horse and head up into the mountains in November to get away from Bud leading to a search party, camping rednecks, a black hole of a quarry, rattlers, bears, and an early season snowfall to tie up the lose ends of the story.

Frazier is as famous for his stunning debut novel (Cold Mountain) as he is for the $8million advance for his less than stunning 2nd effort (Thirteen Moons). This is one part departure for Frazier (it's 20th century instead of 19th) and one part return to what worked in Cold Mountain, where he alternated chapters telling of Iman's walk across NC to get to his home and of Ada's struggle to survive as an outsider in the mountains until Iman returns from the civil war. Here, he flips back and forth between Bud and Luce with each chapter. Both Bud and Luce are fascinating characters in entirely different ways.

Frazier's writing is incredibly lyrical and you want to reread sentences just because they practically sing out to you. And therein lies the problem. The pacing of the story runs as slow and as thick as the sap of the pine forests so eloquently described by Frazier. For 200 pages, Frazier DETAILS the comings and goings of mountain life that is mired in post world war glow with little attention to what's going on beyond the reaches of the scratchy local AM radio station's narrow broadcast radius. When 3 subplots (Luce/Stubblefield/kids, Bud, and the deputy sheriff) come together, a literate, if plodding version of some latter-day Faulkner tale becomes a must-read. But in the end, I was kind of let down by how the story closed, coming full circle back to the delicate, quiet life that Luce had cut for herself.

For those who choose to read this because of Cold Mountain, don't expect a revisit to his recreation of the horror of post-civil war NC. At least you won't need a dictionary of 19th century English for Nightwoods. What you will need is patience to let the story slowly unfold as well as be prepared to appreciate the all too frequent passages that light up this vaguely dark tale set in some southern gothic town that none of us will ever find on any map.

East Coast Don