海角大神

Nightwoods

Charles Frazier returns to the mountains of North Carolina 鈥 this time in the 1960s 鈥 to tell the story of a young woman charged with caring for her murdered sister's children.

Nightwoods By Charles Frazier Random House 259 pp.

鈥淚 think there鈥檚 that old culture of America that鈥檚 gone,鈥 author Charles Frazier told an NPR interviewer during a conversation about his award-winning 1997 novel 鈥淐old Mountain.鈥 鈥淚 suppose when I was a child in the Southern Appalachians, there was just a moment when you could see a little, little vestiges of that, and part of [鈥淐old Mountain鈥漖 is an elegy for that old America.鈥

Frazier鈥檚 wonderful new novel, Nightwoods, is no less elegiac than was 鈥淐old Mountain.鈥 鈥淐old Mountain鈥 is a Civil War novel, but 鈥淣ightwoods鈥 鈥 set in the rural North Carolina of Frazier鈥檚 1960s childhood 鈥 takes us to a world every bit as remote.

The novel鈥檚 protagonist Luce is a wild beauty who seems firmly 鈥 even stubbornly 鈥 rooted in the North Carolina of the past. She lives alone in a forsaken lodge on a forgotten lake that was once a retreat for the rich of another century. 鈥淣ow the millionaires and the railroad were gone,鈥 Frazier writes. 鈥淏ut the lake remained, a weird color-shifting horizontal plane set in an otherwise convoluted vertical landscape of blue and green mountains.鈥

Luce has neither telephone nor car and hugs her solitude tight. Her nearest neighbor 鈥 and friend 鈥 is an older woman named Maddie who lives in the world 鈥渓ike it had remained 1898.鈥 Maddie's front yard is decorated with 鈥渉ot red peppers and brown leather britches drying on lines of cotton twine drooping from the porch posts.鈥

It seems a picturesque enough world, but Luce鈥檚 life is hedged about by violence and loss. Her retreat to the lake was triggered by a rape. (鈥淟uce鈥檚 rapist was a young man, and married. Mr. Stewart. Luce knew him well,鈥 Frazier tells us in prose as lucid and still as the forgotten lake.)

Before that, Luce鈥檚 childhood was upended by the abandonment of her mother, Lola (an unmaternal floozy whom Luce dimly recalls speckled with polka dots and freckles and reeking of booze) and the distant nature of her father, a diminutive, angry sharpshooter who serves as a local lawman despite a nasty amphetamine addiction.

Luce did love her sister Lily 鈥 a more vulnerable version of Luce, a sprite whose neediness 鈥渆xpressed itself raw as a kerosene blaze鈥 鈥 but now she鈥檚 lost Lily as well. She鈥檚 been murdered by her no-good husband Bud, a small-time criminal whose trial for Lola鈥檚 murder lasted only three days before a wily lawyer helped him slip the charge.

The end result of Lily鈥檚 tragic death has been to dump her children 鈥 Dolores and Frank, eerie beings who are 鈥渟mall and beautiful and violent鈥 鈥 into the startled lap of their aunt Luce.

When the children arrive they break the spell of Luce鈥檚 solitude but not necessarily for the better. The siblings, traumatized by having witnessed the death of their mother, seem to have no interests other than setting destructive fires and 鈥 occasionally 鈥 taking a ride on Maddie鈥檚 old black pony.

Luce is just about at her wit鈥檚 end in dealing with the children when a figure from her distant past reappears. Stubblefield, the new owner of the deserted lodge that Luce calls home, remembers Luce from their teenage days when she was a bathing beauty and he used to spend summer vacations with his grandfather.

Despite Luce鈥檚 best efforts to discourage him, Stubblefield 鈥 determined to win her trust and the affection of the children 鈥 will not be chased away. Good thing, too, because with Bud buzzing around seeking out the only two living witnesses 鈥 Lily鈥檚 children 鈥 to the crime he鈥檚 hoping to bury, the little family could use some help.

In some ways, 鈥淣ightwoods鈥 is a marvelously old-fashioned story about the struggle between good and evil. But the lines of traditional narrative blur in so mythic and timeless a setting. The magnificent North Carolina woods are as dangerous as they are sheltering and the story鈥檚 characters forget that constant menace at their own peril.

There鈥檚 a dreamy spell set in motion by Frazier鈥檚 devotion to his native Appalachians. To read this book is to disappear deep into a meticulously recreated landscape and a world that 鈥 sadly 鈥 may now have gone silent.

Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor鈥檚 book editor.

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