Blackwood by Michael Farris Smith

Published by Little, Brown and Company on March 3, 2020

Dark, disturbing, and gritty, Blackwood is Michael Farris Smith’s latest contribution to the literature of the American underbelly. Set in a kudzu-covered valley in rural Mississippi, the novel follows characters who seek escape. The kudzu vines that build a cage around houses and abandoned cars are presumably a symbol of the forces that strangle freedom, forcing characters to reach for figurative machetes to cut themselves free.

Colburn Evans comes back to his hometown in response to an ad that offers a free storefront to anyone who agrees to become a town resident. Colburn assembles sculptures from scrap metal. He envisions the storefront as his workshop. But Colburn finds himself shunned by residents who recall his family’s past, including his father’s apparent suicide-by-hanging. A character tells Colburn that the valley is “one big ghost story. Stories about the past. Stories about the man who killed himself. It’s what we do.” Memories of his father’s death haunt Colburn for reasons that only become fully apparent late in the novel.

The novel’s most decent character is Myers, the local sheriff. He comes across a drifter who appears to be living in a broken down Cadillac with a woman and their son. The story begins with a look at the drifter, who is well along the road to derangement. The fate of the woman and her two children is one of the plot-drivers. The boy soon becomes a fixture in the valley, rummaging through garbage for food, collecting cans in a shopping cart, warily accepting charity, finding independence because he has no choice. Myers eventually comes to regret that he didn’t arrange to repair the Cadillac and send the family on their way. The novel suggests that for a decent person, regrets of that nature — why didn’t I do more to help? —are inevitable.

Colburn is drawn to a bar owner named Celia, another decent character but one who is habitually drawn to troubled men. One of those men, a fellow named Dixon, is married, which creates a conflict (mostly in Dixon’s mind) between Dixon and Colburn. Dixon’s wife wants Dixon to end his embarrassing relationship with Celia while Celia wants Dixon to let her make her own choices about how she lives her life. Like other characters in Blackwood, Dixon struggles to contain the bitterness that compels him to make decisions he will only regret.

The characters coalesce in a plot that uses random acts of violence to illuminate the tragic circumstances of people who cannot see beyond their mistaken assumptions. An unnoticed woman goes missing, followed by the disappearance of twin children. Suspicion focuses on Colburn, since he is an outsider. Eventually another key character goes missing. The misinterpretation of circumstantial evidence leads multiple characters to arrive at false conclusions about the guilt of other characters. Nobody gets it right because they don’t try to get past their anger and view the facts with a rational mind.

In the end, the novel offers a lesson in compassion and understanding. Characters discover the peril of making harsh and unnecessary judgments. One outcast regrets his failure to recognize how he viewed another outcast. “He thought of the boy and the life he had lived and the way he looked and his inability to participate and all that he had missed and would forever miss. It’s not your fault and I looked at you the same way the world looked at you and I should have known better.” If we can’t recognize pain in people who are like us, the novel seems to ask, how can we hope to understand people who are less fortunate than us?

The story’s grit is offset by its grace. Smith’s fluid prose rises above the brutal world it illuminates. Dialog is sharp; atmosphere exudes from the pages. The story is intense, the themes are timeless, and the characters — like your neighbors — are recognizable as types but surprising as individuals. This isn’t a “feel good” story so it might not travel to the top of the best seller charts, but it is a better book than most of the best sellers I’ve read.

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