Dengman Gap by Tony Irons

I wrote very favorably about Tony Irons’ first novel, Hoover’s Children, and commented that I was eager for his second book. Irons has now released Dengman Gap, and this book does not disappoint. The story takes place during 1969 in the Blueridge Mountains which span North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee.

Jeremiah Dixon (J.D.) had the choice of going to any of the Ivy League schools, but he chose to attend the Appalachian School of Forestry, which was only three miles from home. He said it was the best school about forestry in the country, and he wanted to know more about trees. As his college graduation neared, he suddenly had some unexpected free days and in a state of emotional upset (well explained by the author), he headed for Dengman Gap where he heard there was good deer hunting. It’s not that J.D. was hot to kill something. He just wanted to spend some time in the woods and get his thoughts in order. On his way there, he encountered the interesting and pretty 20-year-old Abby and her charge Billy Talikonoge, a boy who was mute and seemingly moronic. Critical to the story was J.D.’s encounter with the Old Man, a wise old hermit who had been monitoring mysterious happenings in a remote, abandoned and forbidden Indian Reservation.

This was a conspiracy story about nuclear and biologic waste that was being stored unsafely on Indian grounds by a multinational chemical company that had been contracting with the U.S. military since WWI. J.D.’s mom, Amanda Dixon was a Ph.D. and research scientist at the nearby medical school, and the old man was a nuclear physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project. Granny Mae was a 92-year-old uneducated songstress. Junior was J.D.’s high school buddy, a truck mechanic, and Marie was the 16-year-old girl Junior got pregnant and married. Uncle Albert was a hog farmer. Sisters Valentine and Francine ran an orphanage in Lubbock, Texas. Irons took this unlikely crew of people and showed his gift for character development, dialogue, and descriptions of the local culture. Even though I could anticipate where the plot was headed, this was a thoroughly enjoyable novel from a part of the country where I have travelled too little. Now, once again, I’m eager to read Irons’ next novel.