Frank Russel is accused of fraud and sentenced to a minimum security prison. Although his sentence is short, he decides to escape. Led by a cat he names Buffalo, he travels to Canada and settles down. His wandering spirit may not handle isolation, though, especially as his past returns to confront him.
This book is fairly poetic. It flows in a pleasing rhythm that kept my attention. I also like the descriptive words that helped me see the scenes as I read.
I also like the subtle but deep themes of regret, grief and redemption. Frank is a man haunted by his past. And he knows he can't return to his former life yet feels shackled to it. That's why he explores and seeks to make peace with himself and his ghosts.
While this book is short, it has made a lasting impact on me. Frank Russel is a human I can relate to.

Unfortunately, this was the second title I DNF’d this year. The concept had me and the idea was there, but it was a little on the slower side. It wasn’t a bad story to say the least… it just wasn’t for me? If that makes sense? The relationship between Frank and Buffalo was adorable and I loved their travels together, but I wasn’t a fan of the spiritual aspect of Frank and how we were mostly just in his thoughts as he rediscovered himself. I wanted more of the story to be physical and in the moment, whereas this kind of just goes through all of the mental and spiritual problems and solutions to his life.

For a novella shorter than 200 pages, it shouldn’t have taken me 4 days to barely get halfway through. 53%, to be exact. Overall, it was just slow and my attention wasn’t grabbed enough to want to read it. Gonna give this one a 2/5-star rating.

My thanks to Etchings Press and NetGalley for the Digital ARC. This book is ALREADY OUT!!! Go check it out for yourself and see what you think!

Not an awful book, but it felt a little boring compared to the description. I thought I was in for a mid-century fever dream adventure, but it was more about a guy reminiscing and wandering though the woods, barely surviving, with his cat.

Probably a great airplane read, but it just wasn't my cup of tea.

Pineville Trace follows Frank, a former preacher/“healer”/con man who has just escaped from prison. Frank struggles to survive, tries to come to terms with the terrible things he’s done in his past, and has lots of conversations with his cat Buffalo.

This book was the first book to ever make me understand why some people hate short books. It simply wasn’t long enough. It was too short for me to get any interesting information out of it. It basically felt like an outline. You know those outlines you have to learn to write in school that are around three pages long? Reading this literally felt like reading one of those. There are some really interesting ideas presented here. I loved Frank’s relationship with Buffalo. Honestly it was the best part of the book. I wish I’d gotten more time to read about it. Frank used to preach with his brother. I really really REALLY wish I’d had more time to learn about the relationship between Frank and his brother. I think that relationship should’ve been the foundation of the entire story, but there was so little time spent on it. And lastly the reason that I just wasn’t interested in this book is that most of the time is just spent on Frank… wandering. That wasn’t interesting to read about in my opinion. This book is so short. If you’re going to write a book this short you don’t have much time to give the reader details about the character, their motivations, their background, and whatever your plot may be (though this was definitely a character focused book, so that doesn’t really apply to this book). But I felt like a lot of the space that should’ve been dedicated to those things was spent on writing about Frank traveling and doing little things to try to survive. And talking to Buffalo about random things. I did enjoy reading his conversations with Buffalo though.

Wes Blake said that he wrote this book because he loves novellas. So do I. They’re my favourite books. Pineville Trace is meant to be a sort of love letter to novellas… well I’m glad he got to publish his letter. I guess he achieved his goal. But, um, I think he could’ve done a better job at writing it. I, as a fellow novella lover, think that my favorite books deserve a better tribute.

So I don’t recommend this. But it only took me an hour and a half to read, so I guess if you’re curious it won’t take you much time to get through it.

Pineville Trace is a gripping and atmospheric novel that draws readers into the eerie charm of a small, rural town with dark secrets. The author masterfully builds suspense, blending elements of mystery and Southern gothic to create a haunting narrative. The characters are complex and vividly portrayed, with their personal struggles intertwined with the town's enigmatic history. The vivid descriptions of the landscape and setting make it come alive, immersing readers in its unsettling beauty. It's a compelling read for fans of suspenseful, character-driven stories with a hint of the supernatural.

Publishing date: 03.09.3034
Thank you to Netgalley and Etchings Press for the ARC. My opinions are my own.

The book as a meal: Beef jerky and cold coffee
The book left me: Emotional and glad to be living a relatively stable life

Negatives:
Sentences were often repeated after each other but written slightly differently
Timeline was hard to follow (jumps back and forth between the past and now)
Main character felt pretentious

Positives:
I would give my life for Buffalo
Vibes were spectacular (I could smell the trees lowkey)
Emotional

Features:
Cat side character with major impact and arc, redemption and regrets, living both off and on the grid at the same time, starving and thriving

Why did I choose this one?
Cover is beautiful, blurb made me want to read

Pick-up-able? Put-down-able?
In-between. The three parts the book was split into had very draggy sections and very tense sections. I would say part two was the best and the most tense

What was the vibe and mood?
As weird as it sounds, this felt like walking outside close to easter. Just that border between spring and winter. Not knowing whether or not it will snow tomorrow. It felt like just barely scraping by, but being content with that life.

Final ranking and star rating?
2 stars, D tier. This was a very atmospheric and emotional book, but I just didn't vibe as much as I hoped. The religiousness, the pretentiousness of the character, and the writing style clashed a little with me. It has a lot of potential, and I think in general this will be a very polarizing book. Split between those who will love it to bits, and those like me who just ... didn't at all.
Sadly, a miss

Blake's prose in Pineville Trace is immediately gripping. This story is unpredictable, though realistic and has much to say about life. While this is a short read, Blake anchors deep, emotional moments and profoundly beautiful imagery with two unlikely characters as friends and confidants. What Blake has written here is a masterful work of fiction with equal amounts of beauty, despair, love, and tragedy. The book's cover is as eye-catching as its content is heart-wrenching.

Pineville Trace by Wes Blakeman follows Frank Russet who escapes prison and takes on an adventure with his cat, Buffalo. It is a fascinating story about facing one's past and its implications in the present. As a non-native English speaker, the writing is accessible and I had no problem fully understanding what's happening in the story. It is not my typical genre but, it was an enjoyable read.

Frank wasn't really interesting because in this book he had a lot of different ideas and thoughts. His side kick was buffalo the cat. This was interesting journey after he walked away from prison in kentucky. Got a lot of different emotions and ideas and thoughts. I like how the cat.What along with this. And each chapter told a story what was going on in this book. It was funny how he moved around. It was a great book and it was very funny

Part cross-country road trip, part fever dream, Pineville Trace follows Frank Russet, escaped convict, and his cat companion, Buffalo, as they travel by car and by foot around the country. The story itself meanders but generally focuses on the ghosts from Frank's past, namely his brother, Henry, and former lover, Lucinda. We come to understand that Frank and his brother were revivalist preachers, which Frank deeply regrets, but not as much as he regrets accidentally killing his brother while drunk.

I found this novella to be somber and atmospheric but it left me wondering what the point of it was. The writing kind of reminded me of Steinbeck, in a way—focusing on the scenery and setting. I would've loved to get more of the story of Frank's past working as a religious con-artist, but a novella only has so much time for that level of depth.

This quote sums up Frank's motivation for escaping from prison and alludes to his ultimate act in the book.

So much of his life had not been logical. He knew it wasn't logical to escape from a minimum-security prison. It was absurd. Foolish. A place you'd be release from in a short time anyway. And now, as a result, he could never return to regular life.

But now he understood why he had left...Because now he was free from himself. He never had to be himself again...A long time ago he had gotten tired of being himself...And now...they would lock him again if he became his old self. And he was glad.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Pineville Trace is an award winning novella-in-flash by debut author, Wes Blake. It is a contemplative account of one Frank Russet, a dishonored charismatic revival preacher, who has just escaped from a minimum-security prison. We are invited along on his journey to a town he has only dreamt of, and never seen - Pineville. Accompanied by a wise cat named Buffalo, who also happens to be an uncanny guide, Frank makes his pilgrimage. All the while, we are privy to his innermost thoughts, reflections, regrets, longings and revelations. Frank may have escaped prison, but he can’t seem to escape his past.

I was completely drawn into this flash introspective purgatory and meditation on how the worldly and the spiritual collide. I found that nearly all of the solo pieces contributed to the entirety of the longer story. Nevertheless, I was here for all of Frank’s meditations. I highly recommend Pineville Trace to readers of flash or short literary fiction, or for those who relish quiet contemplative novellas. I look forward to seeing more from Wes Blake.

⚠️ a pet doesn’t make it to the end of the story

My thanks to the author Wes Blake, University of Indianapolis, Etchings Press and @NetGalley for the pleasure of reading this digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

Pineville Trace is a contemplative novella which follows disgraced revival preacher Frank on his quest to first escape his past and then to finally confront it. The prose is evocative and the many settings along Frank's journey are well drawn. Frank's relationship with his feline companion is really quite moving.

There are two sections of the novella which I felt detracted from the reading experience: a meta-narrative chapter early on (a technique not re-visited later in the book) and a questionable depiction of the speech patterns of a Native American. The reader can skip both of these brief sections without losing any of the novella's impact.

I recommend this book for anyone looking for a moody read to keep them company on a rainy day. You can probably finish it before your coffee gets cold.

Content warning for the death of a pet.

This review week be shared to Goodreads on September 1, 2024 and to Instagram (@goodquietkitty) on September 2, 2024.

I’m grateful to netgalley and to Wes Blake, the author, for offering me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

“After being sentenced to a minimum-security prison in eastern Kentucky, former southern revival preacher and confidence man, Frank Russet, escapes. Taking only a cat named Buffalo and a desire to outrun his former life, he journeys to the fringes of society. As he struggles to survive, Frank confronts his past, seeking redemption amidst the wilderness.”

The novella’s description alone was enough of a draw to lure me in. I’m a huge fan of southern literary fiction, so I suppose my expectations for this book were quite high. I wanted to like it. I really did. But, there are times when we have to be honest with ourselves, and this one fell flat for me.

The character development was lackluster, and there weren’t enough moments of conflict early on to compel the reader to keep going. The phrasing was repetitive throughout—I tried to highlight instances of this, but each page kept filling up with marks—and it seemed that the author didn’t trust his descriptive ability at times. The pacing, particularly within the early pages, felt very rushed, as if he was on a deadline to complete the book. There were many missed opportunities to correct fundamental mistakes.

There were moments when Mr. Blake excelled at using an economy of words, but those efforts were erased by other instances of bloated description. It’s nice when an author enlists the help of the reader to perform the heavy lifting, to allow us to use our imaginations to fill in the blanks. I don’t need to know every single item of clothing that the protagonist is wearing. Here are a few examples:

“He wished he had his old suit: pressed black slacks, black suit coat, fine black silk socks, polished black shoes, a bright, starched white button-up shirt, and his silk black tie.”

“Between the murmur of the old Ford and the heat that unfroze his hands, feet, ears, and nose, Frank felt he could easily drift into sleep.”

And then on the very next page…

“Frank’s body thawed. Slowly. First the outer parts, the extremities—fingers, hands, toes, nose, ears—until his chest and head felt warm like he’d drunk hot coffee.”

While this reads like a freshman attempt, I do believe that the author has the workings of someone to watch. There were no grammatical distractions, and again, moments of true clarity and genius. My gut tells me that the book was rushed, or that revisions didn’t occur.

Pineville Trace quietly welcomes the reader on the protagonist's journey, it's with the calm voices of secular trees mooving in the breeze that Blake tells this story.
Allthough reaching a slump in pace towards the end of the second part of the book, where I thought the ideas and motives were not strong enough to carry my interest, I still felt a sort of peace, a calmness similar to being a child looking out of the parents' car, out in the night and the nature dressed in mistery by it.
Blake's prose flows easily and the author was able to integrate many cultural and natural details that rendered the story easy to be immersed in and the characters easy to relate to. To me, it felt like reading Walden by Thoreau with a modern american twist, an atmospheric tale of escaping civilisation, the past and somehow, the future.

A good story that kept me interested from the beginning. You wont be disappointed with the book or audiobook.

I'm so glad I downloaded this title! Although I didn't expect to cry several kinds of tears at my desk...

I recommend reading Pineville Trace in one sitting for a moving, melancholy, and mindful experience. I was reminded a bit of "A Psalm for the Wild-Built" but don't take that too closely to heart, because the general mood of this story is starkly different than the mood of APFTWB ("Psalm" didn't make me cry *any* kind of tears). But both were a short, contemplative reading experience that left me unable to read anything else for the rest of the day, and wanting to read more by their authors. And both featured a pair of buddies, traveling.

Thank you to Etchings Press and NetGalley for this title! I will be looking into more Etchings Press publications in the future.

Beautifully written and quietly poignant. Following Frank as he reflects on his past, both fondly and with regret, evoked a strange sense of nostalgia. He was so human, so distant but relatable. I felt for him and disliked him and resonated with him all at once. There isn’t really a plot to summarize here, Pineville Trace progresses much like Frank does- always moving, always forward, but distinctly caught in the past. As Frank himself muses, he is a pillar of salt, always looking back.

While Frank was very enjoyable to read, nothing compares to my love of his cat companion, Buffalo. Their relationship truly shined and set the tone for the entire story.

I would absolutely recommend this to readers looking for a thoughtful, speculative book about accepting your past, and to anyone who daydreams about escaping into the woods and leaving their life behind (with the exception of their cat, of course).

“At the end everyone was left alone with their own soul. Even Frank. Even you.”

Normally I love a character-driven novella but this one was a struggle to get through. There are portions that were beautifully written and I loved the sections with Buffalo and Frank but, ultimately, I was left wanting. In particular, there was a section in the beginning that was never explored further. Thank you to Etchings Press and Net Galley for this ARC.

Pineville Trace by Wes Blake. 140 pages, publishing September 3rd, 2024 by Etchings Press.

“Wes Blake tells a parallel story in Pineville Trace. Like a photo and its negative, the narrative follows similar characters and situations as Frank rewriting over his past to make sense of it. Following the Buffalo, Frank Russett mulls over his past in a layered narrative that would lead you deeper into the wilderness with no way out. Wes Blake's debut novella plays with time, begging the reader to follow along and trust the ride. Frank is a protagonist filled with guilt, searching for meaning in the forest with his cat, Buffalo.
As Frank traverses the shadowy edges of society, he encounters remnants of his former self, forcing him to confront his deepest regrets and desires. Blake's haunting prose captures the essence of a man on the brink of transformation, urging readers to ponder the thin line between redemption and damnation.” (Blurb)
Running at only 140 pages, this novella, written in small poetic style piece, is a quick read, but an enjoyable one. At first, the book is a little hard to get into. It waves between past and present, showing you flashes of the main character Frank. The relationship between Frank and his cat Buffalo is the star of the book. Good first book, and will be interesting to see what Blake writes next.

Thank you NetGalley and Etchings Press for an eARC of Pineville Trace! I listened to the audiobook and read this at the same time because it felt like it was short enough to hold my attention to do both. Unfortunately, I did not like this very much. The premise of the book is intriguing and it sounded like something I would have enjoyed but it did not play out well on page. Not too far into the book I lost interest unfortunately :(.