STARRED Book Review: The Great Meadows

Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski

A deeply spiritual story of two men on different paths meeting at a crossroads

A man running from his past and a man hitchhiking toward his future intersect in rural Kentucky in The Great Meadows, leading to the discovery of a decades-old mystery.

Levi Motley returns to his native state of Kentucky, barreling down a highway in his pickup, hungover and heading toward his next destination because “who doesn’t want the feeling of motion fueled by the aphrodisiac of hope?”

When he sees a hitchhiker with a sign reading “Gethsemani,” something inside tells him to turn around. His new passenger is Moussa Diab, a young man hitching a ride to the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani to discern God’s purpose for his life.

Captivated by Moussa’s impressive certainty that his journey is a quest, Levi drops him off at the monastery—unaware that the next time he sees him, Moussa will be dead.

Levi rolls into Bardstown, Kentucky to meet his college friend, Dominick, a reporter at the local paper. With the promise of freelance work, Levi chooses to rent a house and find a whale of a story for his new editor. He ranges around town, reporting on local festivals and personalities, when a police call takes him and Dom to a river bend close to the monastery. This is where Levi discovers the dead man is Moussa.

When a mysterious investigator named Regina Sandoval shows up on his doorstep, asking Levi questions about his connection to Moussa, the novel kicks into high gear. Levi is a likable Lothario whose scruffy good looks get him into some trouble, but his nebulous connection to Moussa leads his journalistic instincts to investigate the investigator: after all, Moussa’s death has been solved, with a man admitting to killing him. But something does not smell right, and Levi decides to help Moussa’s mother by finding out what really happened to Moussa in the beautiful countryside of Kentucky that locals call “The Great Meadows.”

Walsh spins a deep mystery in this novel, one that takes its time unraveling. Levi must negotiate a raft of barriers: from the suspicious Sandoval whose end game is unclear, to the wealthy and connected Westcott family whose patriarch, Conrad Westcott, is the founder of the Westcott Bourbon Company. As Levi pokes his nose around town, he finds disturbing clues about why Moussa came to the abbey and why anyone would want him dead. Along the way, he also wrestles with the ghosts of his past, including an older brother, Declan, housed at the Manchester Federal Correctional Institution nearby.

Levi slowly learns that he is not only uncovering Moussa’s quest, but his own. Will this rolling stone finally let go of the guilt he runs from and allow a little moss to grow?

The answer is skillfully tied to not only Moussa, but also to a family secret from World War Two that only time will reveal. The story and the mystery are a slow burn, but the people and personalities Levi meets in town make this a delightful read with punchy dialogue and clever quips.

Walsh writes with authenticity and obvious love for the “great meadows” and natural beauty of the Bluegrass State, with his precisely drawn characters embodying both the best and worst of a community steeped in its past. The spirituality of the story resonates throughout as Levi accepts that in finding out what happened to Moussa—no matter how sad—he will also find out what happened to him from their brief, consequential encounter along that highway.

“The sadness comes from finding out that nothing turns out exactly as you had hoped it would be, and the gratitude comes from knowing it was worth the ride all the same.”

The Great Meadows is a moving philosophical tale with the veneer of a small town murder mystery. Lyrical and gritty in turns, it’ll leave you feeling hopeful for a return of its Odysseus-like protagonist who is just trying to find home—for good this time.

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