Winter’s approach should be a time to look forward to stretches when life takes a slower pace. It’s also a time to consider gift-giving for the holidays. Three books that have come out in recent months show some of the range available from Kentucky writers—and each has its own sense of time.
One offers a quickened pace, sharp turns, and multiple points of view that have added a lot of entertainment value to today’s thrillers. Another lets its readers grow into deep understanding of characters with the realistic approach of a coming-of-age scenario. And for a third, there is poetic expression of the harshest of realities, as the nightmare of slavery provokes and inspires the taking up of arms for deadly combat in the Civil War.
Former tennis pro J.H. Markert continues to enjoy a bifurcated career as a novelist—but in recent years he’s put historical fiction on a back burner. Whether cleverly anticipating the whims of mass readership, or just following a (dark) blossoming of his muse, of late he’s enjoying considerable success with thrillers that stray into pure horror story.
“Sleep Tight” (Crooked Lane Books; 336 pages, $29.99) accomplishes in its main goal: exploitation of foundational fears, in a package that’s so readable it’s practically addictive. Almost all chapters are as concise as an unexpected glimpse in the corner of your eye. (And wouldn’t you know, a few longer sections—putting a supporting frame to bolster stretched plot logic and psychology of villains—are the only places that sag a bit).
This novel is a return engagement for several elements Markert often brings out. Diabolical killers with backstories that are outlandish but involving. Families fully fleshed out in how everyone responds to understandable stresses or staggering trauma. Heroic or noble figures, often in law enforcement, often women. And, to note because this crosses a line for some readers, children endangered in excruciating circumstances. For “Sleep Tight,” the legacy of an executed murderer leads to a bizarre kidnapping that causes estranged parents to reunite and face their own weaknesses.
“The Thing About My Uncle” (BHC Press; 238 pgs., $16.95) is the first novel from Peter J. Stavros. This Louisville writer has previously delivered high-quality modern fiction in shorter formats. He clearly enjoys a challenge: consider chapbook “Three in the Morning and You Don’t Smoke Anymore,” written in the second-person voice of an insomniac talking to himself. So a first-person bildungsroman would be an understandable next-step stretching of literary muscle.
Rhett, the barely adolescent protagonist, has gotten himself kicked out of school, and his desperate single mother decides to send the boy to the East Kentucky farm of the titular relative. Uncle Theo seems to leap right out of a prime Robert Mitchum film: he’s a figure of gimpy gait and rugged bearing, but with subtle hints of a nimble mind (and a wary one—ready to weigh the need for action). The man has accrued discipline, undoubtedly picked up from some grueling lessons learned. It might be something his sensitive-but-gone-astray nephew can pick up on and learn from. But Rhett must first have some unexpected lessons of his own.
This novel has been created with an ambitious eye toward careful balance. It is certainly more than the sum of its literary devices, such as a metaphorical maze of booby traps. A hulking dog named after a famed writer of familial dysfunction. Some sidebar episodes that give the teen breathing room—and readers a chance to deepen perspective without forced dramatics. And a climactic confrontation with a figure whose arrival seems unexpected yet inevitable.
There’s repetition of signpost phrases and sensory details, like blazes that lend familiarity along a trail. This lends to the realism of Rhett’s narrative (age-appropriate but not turning the novel into a YA title), but at a cost: some of his observations and reactions seem over-presented. It’s a minor quibble.
How much introduction does Frank X Walker need? Poet Laureate of the commonwealth, founder of Affrilachian poetry as a movement, and educator and historian par excellence. This Kentucky treasure offers up a new book of historical verse, and his choices for structure and execution of individual and assembled pieces are sterling. “Load In Nine Times” (Liveright/Norton; 144 pgs., $26.99) is a chronological history tracing roles and viewpoints of African Americans (and many that were stamped upon them, true to the time) from pre-Civil War to a view beyond Reconstruction.
Impactful pieces are all over these pages. “Damned Northern Aggressors” are spat on in the voice of a farmer seething to see the proudly marching results of Union recruitment: what were once his slaves are becoming the U.S. Colored Infantry. But the Union is hardly consistent in treatment of the emancipated (“Who else gonna collect they fallen? They didn’t want us to shoot they guns, but didn’t mind if we carried the bullets.”) And once the bravery of Black soldiers is recognized? “Marvel at how valiantly untrained men die.”
The historically prominent (Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln) are just part of the parade here. All figures have an important say through a weave of comprehension based on an amazing amount of research, as shown in the book’s endnotes. The range of voices is dynamic; the brief glimpses given off by individual lines strike like lightning bolts compared to the mannered prose this history might receive from other hands.
This article appears in Dec 4-17, 2024.