Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky
Oh, this is such a bleak book.
It feels small to write that because I don't think bleakness is truly appreciated anymore. We get our heartstrings tugged so frequently, so casually by many authors. What David Connerley Nahm does with Ancient Oceans of Kentucky is much more than convenient sadness as a plot point though. He takes sorrow to a whole other level and infuses this novel with so many careful layers of emotion that you feel drained by the end.
This is bleakness of the Scottish moors in a 19th century novel kind of sadness and the fact that it takes place today in Kentucky is just another layer of heartbreak.
The plot hinges on the childhood disappearance of Jacob, the little brother of protagonist Leah. There is no mystery here though--the missing boy is deep in Leah's past and there are no police to swoop in now and uncover clues and find him (living or dead). Jacob's disappearance is just the first of many haunts in Leah's life, the ghost that she revisits as the narrative wanders back and forth in time and Jacob disappears again and again in her memory.
It is not surprising that Leah has not gotten over the loss of her brother or wishes still for that thing we call (so casually) "closure". But Namh doesn't just give readers a character with an eye on the past; he gives us overworked Leah at her non-profit job helping desperate families in desperate situations and failing again and again at giving them what they need. (And not even trying for what they might want.) Leah can't save these people--there is no money to save them, no resources, no places to take them in or programs to give them assistance. All she can do is try and as anyone who reads the news these days knows, all the trying in the world isn't enough for all the need.
Leah is overworked and underpaid (of course). She's lonely and sad and can't forget her brother (of course). She feels guilty for what she said and did and didn't do when they were kids (of course). Her family was never the same after Jacob disappeared and now, she doesn't seem to remember what a family is anymore or why it matters. And she watches all the families come in her door and their disappointments break her heart even more. And then, maybe, Jacob comes back.
In some ways Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky seemed almost too much for me to bear as a reader. But for all that this book includes a child abduction (a very unusual event), it is primarily a story of the most mundane aspects of life. It is about getting by, about hanging on, about the falling apart that happens when a family doesn't pull together. There are a thousand familiar stories in Leah's days and as Nahm uses her to anchor his novel, he touches on many of them. His fiction thus forces us to open our own eyes a bit more, to look a little deeper, to recognize the bleakness that fills our world.
The back cover copy says that "Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky is a wrecking ball of a novel..." This is incredibly true; it reminds us just how horrific a wrecking ball truly is.
