There's such a thing as being too protective of your offspring, as Ron Rash (In the Valley; Above the Waterfall; Something Rich and Strange) dramatizes with shocking clarity in The Caretaker. As in previous Rash novels, the setting is Appalachia. It's the early 1950s. Blackburn Gant, his face disfigured from polio, is the live-in caretaker for the cemetery of Blowing Rock, N.C., a job he accepted because, "[t]he dead could do nothing worse to him than the living had already done." His childhood friend Jacob Hampton is the son of a prominent local couple whose two daughters have died. When Jacob goes off to fight in the Korean War, he leaves in Blackburn's care his pregnant teenage wife, Naomi, with whom he eloped--an arrangement that prompted Jacob's parents to disinherit him.
That would be tension enough for most novels, but Rash has further complications in mind. When Naomi returns to her father's Tennessee farm, Jacob's parents receive word that their son was gravely wounded. This leads to a monstrous lie his parents hope will get Naomi and her family out of their lives. This material could have been tawdry melodrama, but Rash is a savvy writer who delves deeply into each character's motivations, and he turns a simple tale of grief and prejudice into a complex and satisfying read. The ending is too pat, but the journey leading to it is a marvel of concision and empathy. The Caretaker is another memorable work from a bard of the American South. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer