A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

The very first paragraph lets us know that this is a book about secrets, matters which will not tolerate the light of day. The author describes a storefront church with the windows all covered in old newspaper "to keep folks from looking in." From this beginning, an atmosphere of evil and impending tragedy hangs over the narrative, because, inevitably, secrets will out.

A mute teenager who becomes the victim of religious zeal or murder or both; curious boys spying on the grownups; a congregation of fundamentalist believers who take scripture literally, including a verse in Mark about the handling of snakes; a charismatic preacher with a maimed hand and a criminal past; an old woman who recognizes evil when she sees it; a conscientious sheriff with a tragedy of his own; a faithless wife and her vengeful husband --all these lead inexorably to a chilling climax. This atmospheric tale is compulsively readable, impossible to put down.

Cash chooses three of the characters to narrate his story: Jess, the 8-year-old brother of the dead boy; Adelaide, the old woman; and Clem Barefield, the sheriff. These are people of little education from deep in the mountains of North Carolina, and the author would have doomed his project from the start if he had not been able to write believably in the vernacular of the region, but the mountain dialect seems quite natural, for the most part. Unfortunately, all three narrators sound the same, which is unnatural when the speaker is a young boy.

This is Wiley Cash's first novel, and though it may not be an instant classic, it is much above average.