BookBrowse Reviews The Caretaker by Ron Rash

BookBrowse:

Ron Rash's emotionally engaging eighth novel explores the aftermath of a soldier's Korean War injury and return to Appalachia.

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Ron Rash is renowned for his writing about Appalachia, but his latest book, The Caretaker, begins halfway across the world from it, with Jacob Hampton on guard duty at the Korean border in the frigid March of 1951. "He just had to survive. … Getting home was what mattered." In just two months, his wife is to give birth to their first child. Jacob's parents, who own a sawmill and shop, have strongly disapproved of Naomi Clarke, a semi-literate Tennessee seventeen-year-old whom Jacob met when she came to Blowing Rock, North Carolina as a hotel maid the previous summer. When they eloped, Jacob was disinherited by his parents, so while he has been away at war he has tasked his friend Blackburn Gant, the local cemetery caretaker, with looking after his pregnant wife.

In the tense opening sequence, Jacob is attacked by a North Korean soldier and their hand-to-hand combat by the side of a frozen river leaves him seriously injured. A telegram arrives to Blowing Rock addressed to Naomi, but the clerk who receives it, a longtime Hampton family friend, takes it to Jacob's parents instead. They spy an opportunity in this near-tragedy and set up an elaborate deception that they hope will ensure Naomi and Jacob are separated forever.

It would have been easy, and justified, to portray Daniel and Cora Hampton as the villains of this novel, but Rash has more empathy than that. He fills in each character's backstory and psychological motivations so that readers, too, understand why they act this way. In the Hamptons' case, the early loss of two daughters made Jacob their precious only child. They want what they think is best for him – taking over the store and marrying Veronica Weaver of the local hardware dynasty – and see his new postwar life as a second chance to engineer that.

As the title indicates, this drama plays out under the watchful eyes of Blackburn, who became Jacob's "blood brother" when they were boys and has been his best friend ever since. Blackburn has a partially paralyzed face from childhood polio, and Jacob was the only one to treat him as a normal peer. Being a go-between for Naomi and Jacob is an uncomfortable position for Blackburn to be in because he, too, loves Naomi. His graveyard becomes a central locale and a site of unexplained phenomena such as mysterious lights that materialize at night (see Beyond the Book) and the deliciously Gothic scene of a night-time visit from someone who appears to be a ghost.

There is a peaceful, relaxed pace to the narrative as it drifts back in time to show Jacob and Naomi's courtship and short months of marriage in their own cottage. However, Rash also creates underlying suspense as to whether the Hamptons' lies will be exposed. Class prejudice, bullying of the disabled, veterans' trauma, and ethical dilemmas are issues that arise naturally over the course of the plot. Secondary characters like Dr. Egan and his secretary, Ruthie, are as well drawn as the main characters. I also enjoyed learning a few specialist cemetery vocabulary words, such as "fylfot," a type of cross that appears on headstones. My only minor disappointment with this engaging work of historical fiction is that the final climactic events occur offstage or are seen from Blackburn's more detached perspective. However, this is in keeping with a story that studiously avoids the sentimentality that is a potential drawback of some war stories and romances. And it is still a powerful depiction of various forms of love, which can be marked by either possessiveness or self-sacrifice.

This review first ran in the October 18, 2023 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.