Placing itself perfectly alongside acclaimed work by Philipp Meyer, Jane Smiley and J M Coetzee, this debut novel charts the story of Roscoe T Martin in rural Alabama in the 1920s. Roscoe has set his sights on a new type of power spreading at the start of the 20th century: electricity.
It becomes his training, his life's work. But when his wife Marie inherits her father's failing farm, Roscoe has to give it up, with great cost to his pride and sense of self, his marriage and his family. Realising that he might lose them all, he uses his skills as an electrician to siphon energy from the state, ushering in a period of bounty and happiness on a farm recently falling to ruin. Even the love of Marie and their son seems back within Roscoe's grasp. Then everything changes.
A young man is electrocuted on their land. Roscoe is arrested for manslaughter and - no longer an electrician or even a farmer - he must now carve out a place in a violent new world.
Caroline Baum's Review
This book captivated me from the get-go and never let up. And it's a debut too, which makes it doubly exciting and impressive. You'd never guess from the assured hand that steers this sad tale, shifting time and points of view with accomplished ease.
The story is simple enough: Roscoe illegally diverts electricity to his struggling farm. Then a man is killed on the power lines. Roscoe and his helper Wilson go to jail for their crime. Roscoe waits to hear from his wife Marie but her silence is deafening. Meanwhile he learns to handle dogs used to track down escaped convicts like himself.
Reeves inhabits Roscoe completely convincingly. He is so mild-mannered that the sheriff who arrests him seems almost unwilling to do so; in prison he becomes a model inmate, spending time in the library and proving himself adept with the chaser dogs. He waits to hear from Marie, writing her many letters, but gets no reply.
In the second part of the book, Roscoe has been released and returns to the farm he left but Marie is no longer there. Instead, Wilson and his family are living there. What happens next tests Roscoe once more, adding to the book's emotional depth.
What makes this novel outstanding is the sensitive characterisation and the period and setting in rural America when electricity is still a novelty. Roscoe's gentle nature contrasts strikingly with Marie's sterner personality and her reaction to her husband's situation. The jail scenes avoid cliché, and there's an added level of jeopardy in the construction of an electric chair at the jail for which Roscoe volunteers his expertise in the hope of gaining parole.
About the Author
Virginia Reeves is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas in Austin. Her fiction has appeared in The Common and The Baltimore Review and has been shortlisted for the Tennessee Williams Fiction Contest and the Alexander Patterson Cappon Fiction Award. Virginia has spent the majority of her life in Montana, but currently lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and two daughters.
Industry Reviews
"A striking debut about love and redemption, the heavy burdens of family and guilt and learning how to escape them. Powerfully told and lyrically written, there is not a false note in this book. Reeves is a major new talent."
