A rare book that I just wasn't able to really get into or finish. I gave it a try, and even gave it a break and went back when things in my life were different, and therefore my mindset was different, but it just wasn't meeting the potential of the back text to me.

It happens; not every book is for everyone.

The setting is Little Canada, North Carolina, a wide place in the road in the middle of nowhere. The family unit, such as it is, consists of April—the most unwilling of mothers—along with her son Thad, and his best friend, Aiden McCall, who shares the trailer at the rear of April’s property with Thad. The plot is centered on the inadvertent death of the local meth dealer, and a small fortune that is unexpectedly left in the custody of Thad and Aiden.

They are not stellar decision makers. In fact, some of the time they seem as if they are half feral.

Aiden came to live with Thad when he was on the run from the law, young and desperate. Thad offered him shelter, and that was more than anyone else had ever done. In fact,

“Nothing about this place had changed in all of Aiden McCall’s life, and maybe that’s why he’d come to hate it so badly. Everything was exactly as it had always been, the haves having and the have-nots starving to damn death.”

Thad, unfortunately, is the last person in this world anyone should become overly attached to. Between his unloving childhood, his time in Afghanistan and the meth he’s used to self-medicate since then, he’s more than half crazy more than half the time. It’s just him, Aiden and his dog, a crossbreed named Loretta Lynn. But things get out of hand, and the bits of baling wire and rusty screws that were barely holding his poor savaged brain together come undone:

“Something broke inside him then. His mind retreated to a place more familiar. There was a sergeant who told Thad the infantry were the hands of God, and that idea made sense to Thad because it was no different from what he had heard all his life growing up in church. The old-timers said some prayers needed feet. But there was evil in this world that had to be strangled. And so it wasn’t just a matter of giving those prayers legs. Sometimes a prayer needed hands just the same.”

As you can see, it’s gritty prose, and it features hardscrabble characters that are not entirely lovable. And so, reader, if you are one that needs a character you can fall in love with, you may have to look elsewhere. Some reviewers have found the story too harsh for their liking, and so to some degree it’s a matter of taste.

But I can tell you this: the settings here are stark and immediate, and the characters are well drawn and completely believable. I appreciate a story that fits the time in which we live, one in which young people have a rough time becoming independent due to economic woes and the rampant drug addiction that seems to live in the shadow of every economic downturn. I believe Aiden and Thad, and I believe Thad’s mother April as well, a woman that only became a mother because someone spit on her as she came out of an abortion clinic. This is a story that resonates, and nobody can tell it like David Joy does.

Highly recommended!

David Joy's debut book Where All Light Tends to Go kinda left something wanting for me, but dang, he stepped it up in this one. *4.5 stars*

This book opens with young Aiden McCall's parents dying violently before his eyes. He ends up in a group home and runs away. He takes to the woods and is found by his friend Thad. Thad tells him to come live with him now, his mom won't care since she and his step-father have given him a trailer on their land to keep him out of their hair.

That sets up the boys friendship. They stick together no matter what. Even after Thad comes home from being deployed in Afghanistan a changed person. They never really stand a chance in life, both of the boys are known screw-ups in the mountain town they live in. Thad's red hair lies to the tale that his mom told him about his dad being a Native American. But there is that red-headed deacon at the church that gives his mom the eye during church.
Thad's mom April now lives up in the house by herself, wishing for a way out of the mountains that she feels trapped in. She put up with a husband that beat the crap out of her because she felt she needed the help he provided, she also never really loved her son Thad. She and Aiden are now sleeping together.

Sounds like a crazy train already doesn't it? But wait, it gets soooo much worse.

Thad and Aiden are bored and tired of stealing copper out of foreclosed houses. When they show up at the dope man's house and stuff and thangs happen, they end up with a ton of dope and cash.

Do they do something smart with the money/drugs? Umm the answer to that would be.... no.
Then the real fun begins, once the two go on a drug filled binge things start to spiral. They end up with two girls. It ends badly.

Then stuff really starts getting bad.
At about 56% into the book I had to take a break.
Then I picked the sucker back up. Because no matter how dark (AND THIS FUCKER IS DARK) this book got I couldn't look away. I at times hated these characters. That's understandable with them. I mean, most of the time they are drugged out of their minds with not much care as to what kind of crap they stir up. Then stinking David Joy did something with this book that completely took me by surprise. He made me actually really sort of care about these messed up losers.
Then he tore my heart into little pieces and laughed.

"In that way, this day was no different from any day that had come before, and that was part of what kept Aiden up at night: the cyclical nature of it all. For his entire life everything had been a continuous whirling of disappointment, the circle seeming to tighten and become just a little more certain with each passing year."

Aiden McCall has known nothing other than his small North Carolina town, and virtually known nothing other than being poor his entire life. Orphaned at a young age, he fended for himself until his best friend, Thad Broom, convinced his mother and her boyfriend to let Aiden stay with them. Aiden and Thad have been inseparable ever since, except for when Thad joined the military and went to Afghanistan.

With the economy in tatters, there is very little for Aiden and Thad to do in order to make money, so they resort to stripping foreclosed houses of wiring and other supplies, and much to Aiden's chagrin, they use most of their earnings to buy drugs. (He dreams of getting out of their town and heading somewhere slightly larger, where there was more opportunity.) Thad returned from Afghanistan with a significant back injury, and his time in the military left him changed emotionally as well, unable to shake the things he saw and did which continue to haunt him, and drugs provide him the only escape.

"Whether a man was born one way or another, he wound up doing things that haunted him the rest of life. People made mistakes that couldn't be fixed...When it all boiled down to it, the only difference between one person and another was whether there was someone to jump in and keep you from drowning."

One night, everything changes. Thad and Aiden's drug dealer accidentally dies in front of them, which leaves them with a significant amount of crystal meth, not to mention weapons and money. The two react in different ways—Aiden tries figuring out how to sell what they're able to take, while Thad loses control and connects with a troubled trio of people, to whom he reveals their secrets. That split-second decision sends Thad and Aiden down a path with dangerous consequences, and both will be tested physically and emotionally, pushed to the brink of survival.

I felt a pervading sense of doom, danger, and bleakness from the opening pages of this book. Even though Aiden and Thad made questionable—and in some cases, troubling—decisions at times in their lives, I still felt like their upbringing left them at a disadvantage from which it was nearly insurmountable to recover.

Can the path of our lives be changed by our actions, or is it predetermined? Does not having a loving family put you at a disadvantage? David Joy explores the answers to those questions, although he makes no real excuses for his characters. This is a dark book, although there are glimmers of hope (in an interesting way), but Joy's storytelling keeps you from getting utterly depressed. His use of imagery is tremendous as well; you can hear the noises and see the sights he describes.

This is the first of Joy's books I've read, and I'm definitely going to read his debut novel, Where All Light Tends to Go, which I've also heard is terrific. This isn't the happiest of books, but the characters he has created and the story he unfurls hooks you so you need to know what happens. Moving and evocative.

NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Putnam provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!