Undone Valley

Twenty years after his father is murdered outside a rundown motel near their ruined Ohio mill town, college dropout Dalton Hartwell leads a quiet life of denial and repressed rage. He spends his days working as an on-call maintenance man for an apartment complex, where he lives and cares for his dying mother. But when a letter arrives one day, notifying him that Andrew Lareaux, the man who killed his father when he was just a boy, has been paroled from prison, it sets Dalton on an obsessive, uncertain journey in pursuit of the truth surrounding the tragic event.
Meanwhile, as Lareaux prepares for his release and tries to mend his fractured relationship with his estranged daughter, Ellie, he finds himself bound by blood to a vicious criminal organization, who plans to collect on his debt in unforeseen ways.
As the lives of these three characters converge and become entangled, a current of deception and despair pull them toward a violent confrontation, from which their only hope of escape is to join together in a desperate fight for survival.
Set amidst the blight and devastation of the American Rust Belt, Undone Valley is a grim, gritty novel about the secrets of the past, how they shape and direct the course of our lives, and the brutal truths that are better left buried.


“In Undone Valley, William R. Soldan achieves a thoughtful balance of the raw and dirty reality of poverty, addiction, and incarceration, with the tenacity and hope of his unforgettable characters. The result of this careful equilibrium is a heartbreaking story of the power of time to heal, but also to fester and stoke. I left this novel feeling like I actually knew these people, and this place, and for me there is no higher praise. Soldan is a master craftsman.”

—Meagan Lucas, author of Songbirds and Stray Dogs


“William R. Soldan’s debut novel is full throttle brutal grit, dark thrills, and wild truths. A lot of writers have taken on rustbelt noir, the dying Ohio, but Soldan understands the place like no other. He’s come into his own with his latest book, a modern gut punch. He understands the graveyards of buildings. The promises lost in their shattered glass, and the whispers of lives long lost in the growing, brittle, grass that engulfs them. Soldan inhabits this rag-tag collection of characters that take you on a savage journey through the Undone Valley.”

—Frank Reardon, author of Nirvana Haymaker and Loud Love on the Sevens and Elevens


“William R. Soldan does what very few writers are able to do: he writes about ugly realities in a way that’s not just skillful, but brutally beautiful, leaving the reader breathless. Undone Valley is a blazing testament to that very fact.”

—Stephen J. Golds, author of Say Goodbye When I’m Gone and Always the Dead


“So much crime writing and Grit Lit seems bent on showing off just how tough and mean and lowdown it is. But William R. Soldan’s Undone Valley doesn’t need to show off. It comes by its grit naturally, with a flinty grace that permeates this beautiful, festering novel right up through its apocalyptic climax. When it comes to true grit, Soldan is the real deal.”

—Joey R. Poole, author of I Have Always Been Here Before