Ron Rash (Something Rich and Strange) could traverse the timeworn Appalachians in which Above the Waterfall is set with his eyes closed, like Virgil in a cave. The novel returns to terrain both familiar and inexhaustible, where old customs and new come into conflict in ways proven fascinating by his previous works. Here, this fixation on home turf continues to pay off, albeit unevenly so.
Gerald is the soon-to-retire sheriff of a mountain town riddled with methamphetamines and vacationers. Becky is a park ranger with old ties to an eco-terrorist and a school-shooting trauma that still haunts her in adulthood. Within a few chapters, the confluence of greed and tradition comes to a head, and the pair struggles to find the culprit who polluted the stream on a resort property. These moving pieces aren't problematic alone, but together, they overwhelm; compared to the arrow-sharp storylines in Rash's best-known work, this novel feels over-embroidered.
Above the Waterfall is decidedly imperfect, but its most crystalline moments read as though they were divinely written. Its reverent writing about nature evokes the films of Terrence Malick, in which the darkest parts of humanity find their foil in pure, unfettered wilderness. There's plenty of material here to mine both extremes--addicts in trailers; corporate hoteliers playing Monopoly with generations-old farmland; dragonflies alighting so gracefully above an eddy that they almost negate the horrors of the human world. The novel's beauty lies in these respites, restful pauses that let Rash's disturbing revelations about human nature register at a lower frequency. --Linnie Greene, freelance writer