Bloomsbury USA 

  $16.00/336 pgs

Carter Sickels fills his first novel with contradictions— religious devotion and the exploitation of the elderly—that the citizens of a fictionalized Dove Creek, West Virginia fail to hear or resolve. “God bless the pillheads,” chuckles Reese, the ex-convict compatriot of protagonist Cole Freeman. “Amen,” Cole intones. Along with the villainous Heritage Coal Company (that specializes in mountaintop removal mining), Sickels portrays a group of characters who mirror Heritage’s evils. The reader comes to see, via Sickels’ deft rendering of Cole’s conflicted conscience, the inability of a single man to impact his community’s fortune.

A host of supporting characters linger in a similar thematic purgatory. When twenty-seven-year old private care worker Cole Freeman ponders his nagging criminal habits (stealing valuables from the elderly, selling prescription drugs to junkies), he cannot differentiate himself from “who he’d become, or who he’d always been.” Terry Rose and Charlotte (Cole’s childhood best friend and on-and-off girlfriend, respectively) exist as specters, drifting in and out of focus and sobriety. An African-American octogenarian, Mabel Johnson, has an apparent third eye; Cole has the sneaking suspicion that Ms. Johnson portends his comings and goings, and that she alone sees through his innocent facade. Continue reading →