UPDATED - 4/3/12 - see link at bottom

The Cove, a remote locale in North Carolina, is a cursed place, or so everyone seems to think. The story opens in the 1950s when a man from the TVA comes by, preparing the area for flooding as part of a dam project. That the elders he encounters think burying the cove under tons of water is a good idea offers a first indication of trouble. When the man, trying for a drink in a well near some abandoned buildings at the site, brings up murky water covering a skull, we have our ending point. How we get there is the tale.

Rash is a master at setting a mood, a rather dark one here, and he keeps the wires of tension zinging, so you know something bad is gonna go down, but the green light of possibility keeps flapping by, keeping hope alive. That makes The Cove, incredibly rich with imagery and atmosphere, a page-turner of a different sort. This is clearly not an action adventure thriller where the fate of the planet is at stake, but Rash’s ability to portray place and to offer characters that are so richly drawn, so engaging, is such that we keep flying through his tale in order to see whether their world can be saved, or is doomed by a faceless fate.

World War I is almost done. Twenty-something Laurel and her brother, Hank, have survived their parents and are trying to make a living on the troubled property the locals call “The Cove.”

The air grew dank and dark and even darker as she passed through a stand of hemlocks. Toadstools and witch hazel sprouted on the trail edge, farther down nightshade and then baneberry whose poisonous fruit looked like doll's eyes.

Uh oh. Hank had served in WW I, but left a hand behind. Still, he is hale and hearty otherwise, works very hard on their farm and plans to marry. Laurel is doing her washing when she hears the song of a single parakeet. The cove may be the last habitat of this now-extinct bird. What is unusual about what Laurel hears is that parakeets do not appear individually, but only in flocks. She follows the sound and spies a bedraggled young man, calmly making remarkably avian music on his flute.

Birds figure prominently in Rash’s beautiful tale. He offers us much information about the Carolina Parakeet, how they behave and how, at least in part, they have come to be as scarce as they are. Unwillingness to leave a fallen comrade behind enters into this, with obvious foreboding. The flutist, Walter, is inspired by the birds, in a possibly magical way, and sees that the cove has more to offer than darkness.

The next afternoon he came to a brook and followed it. By then he had begun to feel feverish. A music he'd never heard before rose from the stream. The notes had colors as well as sounds, bright threads woven into the water's flow. Some of that bright water splashed up on the bank. It was green and shimmering and he scooped it up into his palm and it became a feather.

Who Walter turns out to be is central to the story, but some might regard it as spoiler material to say too much here, so I am putting that at the bottom of this review for any who might wish to take a look. For now we can get by with the rather obvious intel that Boy with flute meets Girl with purple birthmark and limited prospects.

The why of her prospects is a major element. Seems the locals are a superstitious lot. They really do believe the cove is cursed and Laurel’s prominent birthmark labels her in their eyes as personally cursed at least and maybe something much worse. Her intelligence does not matter much to such people. (Reminds me a lot of right-wing talk radio and Tea Party sorts) A group of local women go out of their way to shun Laurel.

An image from [Laurel’s] childhood came to her. A hawk had grabbed a baby chick and then lost its grip. The biddy was hurt and bleeding and the other biddies began pecking it. Because that was what biddies did, she’d learned that day. They found one of their own sick or injured and took turns pecking it to death.

Epitomizing the dangerous ignorance of the arrogant unknowing is Chauncey, draft dodger of the venal, connected sort, (clearly he had other priorities during The Great War) eager to make political hay and more than happy to whip up some anti-German xenophobia in the service of that cause. He tries to get a local language professor fired for talking with Germans, while fantasizing about his own political future. Chauncey plays a central role when his dark deeds yield trouble beyond his control.

Hope and danger, light and dark, good and evil, sanity versus superstition. If Rash were a painter his canvasses would be in the Met. The Cove is so different from his masterpiece, Serena, yet displays the same power, the same delicate skill. Serena told a large tale in big splashes of color, bright reds and blues. The Cove tells its story in small images, and a palette that stays mostly on the dark side with healthy dollops of green to signal the possibilities of life and love. Serena might take up an entire wall, while The Cove would fit in among several in a room. But you would find yourself coming back to look at it again and again, appreciating this, then noticing that. Ron Rash is one of our best writers and The Cove is top-notch work. Where Serena was large, The Cove is a much smaller canvas, but just as satisfying.

Personally I would put Rash himself in that other collection, the one in the American Museum of Natural History, in the Hall of Minerals and Gems.

Can music, hard work and life overcome darkness, venality and ignorance? The journey to The Cove is a trip worth taking, with a Shakespearean climax that will leave you quivering.

Now as for Walter. His character is based on an actual event from the war. A German cruise ship, The Vaterland, had the misfortune of being docked in Hoboken when war broke out. The German crew was stranded. When the USA declared war, long after, many German civilians who had been working on the Vaterland and the dozens of others from stranded German ships were interned, some in North Carolina. This is the camp from which Walter escapes, as detailed in chapter 3. And, obviously, as a German national in the USA during World War I, particularly as an escapee from an internment camp, he needed to lay low, being at rather high risk.

UPDATES

April 1, 2012 - Janet Maslin's wonderful review in the NY Times