Black River - Hardcover

Hulse, S. M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0544309871 ISBN 13: 9780544309876

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015

Synopsis

A tense Western and an assured debut, Black River tells the story of a man marked by a prison riot as he returns to the town, and the convict, who shaped him.  When Wes Carver returns to Black River, he carries two things in the cab of his truck: his wife’s ashes and a letter from the prison parole board. The convict who held him hostage during a riot, twenty years ago, is being considered for release.

Wes has been away from Black River ever since the riot. He grew up in this small Montana town, encircled by mountains, and, like his father before him and most of the men there, he made his living as a Corrections Officer. A talented, natural fiddler, he found solace and joy in his music. But during that riot Bobby Williams changed everything for Wes — undermining his faith and taking away his ability to play.

How can a man who once embodied evil ever come to good? How can he pay for such crimes with anything but his life? As Wes considers his own choices and grieves for all he’s lost, he must decide what he believes and whether he can let Williams walk away.

With spare prose and stunning detail, S. M. Hulse drops us deep into the heart and darkness of an American town.

About this title

Review:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, January 2015: Black River is a portrait of a man shaped by the unforgiving landscape of the west – its beauty and violence and the haunting memories that fill a life. Wesley Carver is a retired corrections officer who twenty years ago was kidnapped and viciously tortured in a prison riot. After living in Spokane for 18 years, he’s come back to his home in Black River, Montana to scatter his beloved wife’s ashes, and to attend the parole hearing for the man that tortured him, destroying his hands and taking away the one thing that made him complete: playing the fiddle. Hulse gracefully unfolds the story of Wes’s past: his fraught relationship with his step-son, his father’s lonely death, and his abled hands, which "made music for the moon and the stars.” By turns angry, grieving, violent, and compassionate, Wes wrestles to find his faith, hide his fear, and move on from the two things that he’s loved. Black River is a sure-footed and powerfully drawn debut. --Alexandra Woodworth

From the Back Cover:

PRAISE FOR BLACK RIVER
 
“Black River is one of the best debut novels I've read in a long time. S. M. Hulse is a smart and sensitive writer, utilizing strong, clean and evocative prose to tell us of Wes Carver, a man who is wrestling with the world and himself, haunted by an old horror, tattered family bonds, a wife who is dead but not gone.” — Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter’s Bone
 
“A vivid, compelling debut novel. Hulse is an astute guide to an implacable western landscape of grief, violence and redemption.” — Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins

“Hulse’s prose mirrors the Montana land: spare, powerful, and dangerous. This is a novel about love born from violence, about families torn apart by tragedy, and about a community that must take a long, hard look at its past if it’s ever going to see its future. Like Kent Haruf and Larry McMurtry, S. M. Hulse knows the landscape about which she writes, and she understands the hearts of those who live there.” — Wiley Cash, author of A Land More Kind Than Home
“Black River tackles themes of Old Testament proportion—the inheritance of sin, deliverance and damnation, good and evil. This is a story you won’t forget.” — Siobhan Fallon, author of You Know When the Men Are Gone

“Black River astounds with its acute evocations of place, its marrow-deep empathy, and its quietly lyrical virtuosity. This is a small marvel of a book!” — Bruce Machart, author of The Wake of Forgiveness
“Hulse writes with great clarity and precision, her language a celebration of rigor and intensity, and with such awareness of human rage and love—and fear of love—that her novel Black River feels like a river itself, teeming and unexpected and driven.” — Kent Meyers, author of Twisted Tree

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0544309871
• ISBN 13: 9780544309876
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240