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The World Made Straight: A Novel
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Product Description
Travis Shelton is seventeen the summer he wanders onto a neighbor’s property in the woods, discovers a crop of marijuana large enough to make him some serious money, and steps into the jaws of a bear trap. After hours of passing in and out of consciousness, Travis is discovered by Carlton Toomey, the wise and vicious farmer who set the trap to protect his plants, and Travis’s confrontation with the subtle evils within his rural world has begun.
Before long, Travis has moved out of his parents’ home to live with Leonard Shuler, a one-time schoolteacher who lost his job and custody of his daughter years ago, when he was framed by a vindictive student. Now Leonard lives with his dogs and his sometime girlfriend in a run-down trailer outside town, deals a few drugs, and studies journals from the Civil War. Travis becomes his student, of sorts, and the fate of these two outsiders becomes increasingly entwined as the community’s terrible past and corrupt present bear down on each of them from every direction, leading to a violent reckoning—not only with Carlton, but with the legacy of the Civil War massacre that, even after a century, continues to divide an Appalachian community.
Vivid, harrowing, yet ultimately hopeful, The World Made Straight offers a powerful exploration of the painful conflict between the bonds of home and the desire for independence.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #255085 in Books
- Published on: 2006-04-04
- Released on: 2006-04-04
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Rash's finely wrought third novel (after Saints at the River) follows the wayward trajectory of high school dropout Travis Shelton, who stumbles on a neighbor's crop of marijuana while out fishing in Madison County, N.C. He steals a few plants to sell to Leonard Shuler, a divorced and disgraced former high school teacher, who is living in a trailer and selling drugs. Travis has a violent run-in with the father-and-son Toomeys, who own the crop, and is left hospitalized and homeless. He moves in with Leonard and his pill-popping girlfriend. There, Travis and Leonard study the Civil War ledgers and journals of a Dr. Candler, and learn of the county's seismic upheaval during the Shelton Laurel Massacre and its aftermath. Meanwhile, the Toomeys, who do business with Leonard, are not finished exacting their pound of flesh, this time from Leonard. Rash's vivid prose depicts his characters' dependence on drugs, alcohol and hell-raising with sympathy, rendering their shared sense of futility and economic entrapment without sentimentality or easy answers. The Civil War sections are less successful, but they convey the past's hold on the present and ground Rash's Appalachian wanderers in a shared vision of American immobility.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
High-schooler Travis Shelton steals one too many marijuana plants from vicious tobacco-farmer-turned-drug-dealer Carlton Toomey and ends up caught in a bear trap, his foot so mangled he needs surgery. Travis' stern father kicks him out, and he ends up bunking at the rundown trailer of bookish Leonard Shuler, a low-level drug dealer and former schoolteacher who lost his job and his family because of false charges. Leonard sees in Travis something of himself in his youth, when he used his intelligence to outrun the fate that lies in store for so many of the region's poverty-stricken residents. He bonds with the boy over their shared fascination with a local Civil War incident, a massacre that divided the town. Just as Leonard starts to get his own life in order and talks Travis into making plans for college, he becomes enmeshed in a confrontation with Toomey. Part melancholy historical novel and part high-voltage thriller, this third novel from the talented Rash will appeal to readers who like their suspense done with literary flair. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"This is the third novel by Ron Rash that has brought my life to a grinding halt -- but to praise Rash simply as a powerful storyteller would be to overlook his gifts as a profoundly ethical writer and, at the same time, a poet with a fine and tender eye for the beauty of nature. What I love and admire most of all about this book, however, is its fierce confrontation of a human dilemma that has sparked too many of the world's most violent tragedies: the burning question of just how much allegiance we owe family and community, including the ghosts from our past."—Julia Glass, author of Three Junes
"The World Made Straight is a wonderful, heartbreaking, heart-healing kind of work, a work of genius--genius and insight and poetry and the kind of language that whispers to me like music coming back off dense wet hills and upturned faces."—Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina
"Rash writes with beauty and simplicity, understanding his characters with a poet's eye and heart and telling their tale with a poet's tongue."—William Gay, author of Provinces of Night
"Ron Rash writes so well about real people, people one paycheck short of extinction, that you care what happens to his characters in every clause. In A World Made Straight, he shows how much trouble a poor ol' boy can get in, just trying to catch a fish or two. Even in this novel, his words sound like poetry."—Rick Bragg, author of All Over but the Shoutin' and Ava's Man “Deft, intelligent, crisp, sensual and lyrical, The World Made Straight is the best work yet by a wonderful writer. This is why we read books: to encounter a great story told well.”—Rick Bass
Customer Reviews
Gritty and slow
This is probably my least favorite of all of Rash's works. I thought the backstory of the Civil War slaughter was a pretty weak platform on which to rest a lot of the contemporary story. And the grittiness made me squirm. Maybe that was the author's intent, but I kept wanting to take a shower!
As usual, the character development was good, but that was not enough to sustain the book. I kept reading because I hoped I would feel differently about the book by the end, but I didn't.
I am looking forward to his upcoming book, "Serena". Sounds like a winner.
I Don't Get It!
I don't understand all the gushing here. This is a mediocre read that never leaves the ground (at least not by page 203, where I simply gave up). I gave it 2 stars instead of one because of grammatical accuracy. The plot plods along with dull characters. When Rash attempts insight into them, it becomes a hodge-podge of folksiness, random quotes, boring conversations and crippled stabs at philosophy. He is obviously familiar with the landscape as he spends about twice as many words to describe a place as is needed. The medical journal tool contributes nothing but more contrivance in trying unsuccessfully to wring an interesting story out of very little. Very unconvincing fiction. I read a pan of this book in some periodical when it came out and I thought it interesting. I forgot about it until I saw it at Amazon in paperback and purchased it. I so wish I had rented it at the library but at least I didn't pay hardback price. I'm sorry to be so critical of someone whose work is thought so highly of by the previous 13 reviewers but it just ain't so, Bobbie Joe.
I have a new RASH
Ron Rash manages to combine beautiful prose with an entirely unpredictable plot. His gift is that he doesn't allow the plot to overwhelm the language of the Carolina mountains. The native patwois seems beautifully logical and proper in Mr. Rash's creative hands.
