More from my Book Review Archives
Posted on July 26th, 2009
My review of this book appeared originally in another publication and is reprinted here:
The World Made Straight
By Ron Rash
Henry Holt, $24.00, 304 pages
ISBN 0-8050-7865-5
Seventeen year old Travis Shelton lives in the mountains of western North Carolina, and—when Ron Lash’s superb tale of redemption and healing begins—young Shelton knows little of his family’s or his region’s history. “Haunted by shades . . . as if created by the mountains’ light-starves ridges and coves,” the Shelton family’s dark heritage from the Civil War is the reason why the rural county in which they have lived for nearly two hundred years is known as “Bloody Madison.”
Indifferent about his family’s past and impatient about his own future Travis Shelton’s present becomes complicated when he has an encounter with Carlton Toomey. One of the most enigmatic men in Madison County, Toomey impresses everyone as a “walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.” Beyond the apparent paradox, though, Toomey is purely and viciously dangerous. When Shelton ignores the menace, he has a nearly fatal encounter with Toomey after which young Travis finds himself estranged from his family but befriended—albeit hesitantly—by the solitary scofflaw Leonard Shuler. A man who is secretly haunted by his own past but apparently unconcerned about the present, a normally aloof and withdrawn Schuler—in his reluctant role as mentor and friend—will lead Travis to question all that he believes to have been true about his obligations to his family’s history and to his own future.
In The World Made Straight, author Ron Lash—like his southern gothic ancestors William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor with whom he can be most favorably compared—offers readers a powerful story about families and individuals troubled by subtle evils, persistent violence, malignant fear, and the relentless encroachment of the past upon the present. At the same time, however, this highly recommended novel—vividly enriched by clear, concise prose—also becomes a beautifully rendered palimpsest of memory in which the brooding presence of buried regional and family history is finally overcome by the cathartic power of truth and sacrifice.
Tags: Apparent Paradox, Author Ron, Book Review Archives, Coves, Dark Heritage, Evils, Fatal Encounter, Flannery O Connor, Henry Holt, Hig, Hundred Years, Madison County, Relentless Encroachment, Ron Rash, Schuler, Scofflaw, Shelton Family, Toomey, Walking Contradiction, William Faulkner
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