Beasts of the Earth

Harlen LeBlanc has crafted a quiet life for himself. In 1987, he works as a groundskeeper at a high school in a small Texas town. He seems gentle and mild-mannered. He keeps himself to himself and sticks to his routine. But when a young coworker, Gene, is accused of murdering a former girlfriend, Harlen can't let that lie. He determines to investigate for himself, and winds up with the eyes of the law pointing at him.

Michael Fischer steals from other folks' trap lines in the swamps of Louisiana in 1965. His life is one of grinding poverty and despair, and stealing is the only way he can try to provide for his fanatically religious mother and younger sister while his father, Munday, is in prison. But Munday's return home doesn't restore order to the family. Instead, when Munday returns home, trouble follows in his wake. He soon displays the measure of the evil that lurks within him, and when Munday turns that evil on his own daughter, Michael flees. He is taken in by a dying man, Remus, who is the opposite of Munday and who does his best to show Michael how to be a good man even when life's trials threaten to overwhelm.

The book opens with a prologue that seems almost scriptural in its reading. It describes a watchmaker, toiling diligently at his station, ever winding, ever creating, oblivious to the horde crowding around his workspace seeking salvation. Wanting to be seen. The multitudes cry out, asking why the creator has forsaken them. But the watchmaker continues working, creating. The relentless flow of time and the stolid indifference of a creator to man's problems is not an obvious part of the story, but it is a constant underlying thread.

James Wade drew me into the stories of both characters, Harlen and Michael. Through their eyes, he paints a vivid picture of the unfairness, the brutality, that life can often inflict upon a person. Michael didn't ask to be the child of a pedophile and abuser. Harlen didn't ask for the choices that he finds he must confront as he seeks to establish Gene's innocence. Yet there they both are, struggling with their respective burdens.

The ending of the book wasn't what I expected, I don't think, but I'm not sure it could have ended any other way. There is closure, of a kind, a wrong set right. And while Harlen is a flawed man, broken in a way he cannot redeem, he still brings a little light to at least one person's life. In the darkness, there is a thread of hope.

Beasts of the Earth is not a quick, easy read. It digs into some dark places in the human psyche and doesn't flinch from harsh topics. But it's worth reading for the idea that, even though a man may walk through some of the deepest darkness, it does not have to overwhelm him.

I had good things to say about Wade's second book, River, Sing Out. Beasts of the Earth is another five-star read for me and establishes Wade firmly as one of my must-read authors.