The Green Age Of Asher Witherow

A miner's son is immersed in the dark spirituality of an insular, mostly Welsh Northern California mining town in the mid-19th century in this gritty coming-of-age debut. When Asher Witherow is eight, he witnesses the burning of his best friend, Thomas Motion, in a horrific accident as the boys explore the caverns of nearby Mt. Diablo. Witherow hides his knowledge of the accident even as a search is mounted, a situation that intrigues Josiah Lyte, the boy's bizarre schoolteacher and local preacher who eventually gets cast out by the populace for integrating Hindu elements from his upbringing in India into his work. Much of the novel deals with Lyte's mystical influence over his precocious pupil, but some years after the accident Witherow also enters into an ill-fated romance with his "evening friend," Alice Flood. Cunningham does a superb job of capturing the grim rhythm of life in the mines, balancing that material with fine childhood character studies. Occasionally, the author gets carried away and the spiritual material turns lurid, but the beauty of Cunningham's naturalistic prose and the strong characterization of young Asher Witherow make this a worthwhile debut from a noteworthy new author.
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First novelist Cunningham writes no semiautobiographical coming-of-age story, but a thoroughly researched and accomplished historical novel. Its unusual structure and richly descriptive, evocative language display a mastery that is surprising in a novelistic debut. Although the plot follows Asher's early life in a largely chronological manner, the book's five sections ("Earth," "Blood," "Bone," "Ash," "Earth") define his life episodically and describe three disastrous events in his first 20 years. The narrator's voice-- wry, compassionate, and detached--examines, reviews, and interprets the actions and emotions of his invincibly innocent younger self. Memorable characters people the Nortonville, California, community, contributing texture and weight to the story. Most impressively, Cunningham depicts the rigors of life in a frontier mining town--especially the physical hardships--and the fragility of humans living in harsh conditions. The darkness of events and the elegance in structure and language will make this book satisfying to readers who enjoyed such books as Robert Morgan's Gap Creek (1999) and Annie Dillard's The Living (1992). Ellen Loughran
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