In this melancholic assemblage of more than two dozen short stories, the author examines the austere conditions of human life in the American West and the backwoods of Pennsylvania; the formidable and unforgiving nature of the terrain serves as an analogue for the human soul. In the titular story, aging oil-rig hands Otie and J.L. discover that the company they work for has been suddenly sold, resulting in a massive windfall for its crass owner. Left without any apparent options, the pair chooses to die by suicide in a macabre pantomime of a lovers\u2019 pact. The scene is powerfully captured by the author: \u201cOtis and J.L. were flat on the floor, embracing, motionless, blue and cold. Tacked to a pecan tree was a white paper plate. On the plate was scrawled a note, a message that spoke of gratitude.\u201d In one brief story, \u201cThe Reincarnation of Ned Piketon,\u201d an unnamed fisherman yanks a decaying human hand from the water, adorned by one ring with the name Ned etched onto it. He knows only one Ned from his own life, a \u201chuman weed\u201d who cooks meth, and unsentimentally decides to continue his fishing, using the hand as bait. This peculiar combination of the gruesomely saturnine and comic is a signature feature of this sad but absorbing collection. In the latter third of the book, many of the stories revolve around the character Will, a young boy in rural Pennsylvania; sometimes these tales strike falsely sentimental notes. For example, in \u201cThrough the Trees,\u201d Will, alienated from his family, draws a picture of himself as an \u201cexpressionless boy\u201d outside the house in a heavy-handed act of symbolism that apparently still needs additional commentary: \u201cAll alone, in the deep cold snow, up above his knees.\u201d Fortunately, this cloying imagery is not characteristic of Burtch\u2019s writing, which, more often than not, admirably avoids treacle.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In this melancholic assemblage of more than two dozen short stories, the author examines the austere conditions of human life in the American West and the backwoods of Pennsylvania; the formidable and unforgiving nature of the terrain serves as an analogue for the human soul. In the titular story, aging oil-rig hands Otie and J.L. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}