What do you think?
Rate this book
Pickard County Atlas
Small-town secrets loom large in this spellbinding rural noir about the aftershocks of crime and trauma that shake a Nebraskan town
In a dusty town in Nebraska’s rugged sandhills, weary sheriff’s deputy Harley Jensen patrols the streets at night, on the lookout for something—anything—out of the ordinary. It’s July 1979, and the heat is making people ornery, restless. That and the Reddick family patriarch has decided, decades after authorities ended the search for his murdered boy’s body, to lay a headstone. Instead of bringing closure, this decision is the spark that threatens to set Pickard County ablaze.
On the fateful night of the memorial service, Harley tails the youngest Reddick and town miscreant, Paul, through the abandoned farms and homes of their run-down town. The pursuit puts Harley in the path of Pam Reddick, a restless young woman looking for escape, bent on cutting the ties of motherhood and marriage. Filled with desperate frustration, Pam is drawn to Harley’s dark history, not unlike that of her husband, Rick—a man raised in the wreckage of a brother’s violent death and a mother’s hardened fury.
Unfolding over six tense days, Pickard County Atlas sets Harley and the Reddicks on a collision course—propelling them toward an incendiary moment that will either redeem or end them. Engrossing, darkly funny, and real, Chris Harding Thorton’s debut rings with authenticity and a nuanced sense of place even as it hums with menace, introducing an astonishing new voice in suspense.
In a dusty town in Nebraska’s rugged sandhills, weary sheriff’s deputy Harley Jensen patrols the streets at night, on the lookout for something—anything—out of the ordinary. It’s July 1979, and the heat is making people ornery, restless. That and the Reddick family patriarch has decided, decades after authorities ended the search for his murdered boy’s body, to lay a headstone. Instead of bringing closure, this decision is the spark that threatens to set Pickard County ablaze.
On the fateful night of the memorial service, Harley tails the youngest Reddick and town miscreant, Paul, through the abandoned farms and homes of their run-down town. The pursuit puts Harley in the path of Pam Reddick, a restless young woman looking for escape, bent on cutting the ties of motherhood and marriage. Filled with desperate frustration, Pam is drawn to Harley’s dark history, not unlike that of her husband, Rick—a man raised in the wreckage of a brother’s violent death and a mother’s hardened fury.
Unfolding over six tense days, Pickard County Atlas sets Harley and the Reddicks on a collision course—propelling them toward an incendiary moment that will either redeem or end them. Engrossing, darkly funny, and real, Chris Harding Thorton’s debut rings with authenticity and a nuanced sense of place even as it hums with menace, introducing an astonishing new voice in suspense.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 5, 2021
189 people are currently reading
4149 people want to read
About the author
Chris Harding Thornton
2 books95 followersChris Harding Thornton, a seventh-generation Nebraskan, holds an MFA from the University of Washington and a PhD from the University of Nebraska, where she currently teaches. She has worked as a quality assurance overseer at a condom factory, a jar-lid screwer at a plastics plant, a closer at Burger King, a record store clerk, an all-ages club manager, and a PR writer. Pickard County Atlas is her first novel.
https://www.mcdbooks.com/authors/chri...
https://www.mcdbooks.com/authors/chri...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 196 reviews
November 6, 2020
"Pickard County's dirt was erratic as the weather...it'd once drawn people accustomed to life on cusps. Farm kids, immigrants, children of freed slaves. They'd come a century before for cheap railroad land or cheaper homestead tracts...". In 1978 Nebraska, Pickard County deputy sheriff Harley Jensen, choosing to work the night shift, patrolled the streets of the run down town and the outlying abandoned fields and farmhouses, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Imagine a call to investigate a complaint about an unmowed lawn or a stolen gas can. This night was different. Why was Paul Reddick parked in his F-450 truck at Harley Jensen's abandoned farmhouse?
"Harley saw his shadow was...swallowed by the house that loomed at his back...". It happened in 1938. Dinner prepared. The table set. Tragedy struck. By working nights, Harley could avoid any emotional ties. When his shift ended, he returned to his empty abode.
In 1960, seven year old Dell Reddick Junior was murdered. The killer fessed up but never revealed the location of Dell Junior's body. How could the Reddick family have closure? Mother Virginia Reddick, became a shut-in left with two young boys. Dell Senior, moved out but continued to support the young family. Out of the blue, Dell Senior decided to lay a headstone. "A funeral with no body...no death certificate eighteen years late". "Reddicks would be Reddicks...Virginia had the sense to cut ties and disappear". Youngest son Paul, "had the hostile indifference of a person who valued nothing...he needs to get his shit together". Pam Reinhardt had married Rick Reddick. They lived in a broken down trailer. "Every time she tried to say what little they had was one minor inconvenience away from disaster...one blown tire away from living in a cardboard box, he brought up Dell Junior". "Be glad you don't have a dead missing kid like my parents".
A string of strange events occur at empty farmhouses. Still warm cigarette butts, slightly chilled Cutty Sark, a warm pot belly stove with pieces of burnt clothing. A burglary was committed during a funeral. The deceased's clothing stolen including his underwear! Glen Cox, sheriff cautions Harley, "Don't go jumping straight to Reddick. You can't keep letting that kid get under your skin".
"Pickard County Atlas" by Chris Harding Thornton is a gritty, debut mystery delving into the lifelong effects of trauma and crime. The characters, both primary and secondary, are well fleshed out. The read was gripping and would have been greatly enhanced by a map of the town and its outlying fields and farmhouses.
Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
"Harley saw his shadow was...swallowed by the house that loomed at his back...". It happened in 1938. Dinner prepared. The table set. Tragedy struck. By working nights, Harley could avoid any emotional ties. When his shift ended, he returned to his empty abode.
In 1960, seven year old Dell Reddick Junior was murdered. The killer fessed up but never revealed the location of Dell Junior's body. How could the Reddick family have closure? Mother Virginia Reddick, became a shut-in left with two young boys. Dell Senior, moved out but continued to support the young family. Out of the blue, Dell Senior decided to lay a headstone. "A funeral with no body...no death certificate eighteen years late". "Reddicks would be Reddicks...Virginia had the sense to cut ties and disappear". Youngest son Paul, "had the hostile indifference of a person who valued nothing...he needs to get his shit together". Pam Reinhardt had married Rick Reddick. They lived in a broken down trailer. "Every time she tried to say what little they had was one minor inconvenience away from disaster...one blown tire away from living in a cardboard box, he brought up Dell Junior". "Be glad you don't have a dead missing kid like my parents".
A string of strange events occur at empty farmhouses. Still warm cigarette butts, slightly chilled Cutty Sark, a warm pot belly stove with pieces of burnt clothing. A burglary was committed during a funeral. The deceased's clothing stolen including his underwear! Glen Cox, sheriff cautions Harley, "Don't go jumping straight to Reddick. You can't keep letting that kid get under your skin".
"Pickard County Atlas" by Chris Harding Thornton is a gritty, debut mystery delving into the lifelong effects of trauma and crime. The characters, both primary and secondary, are well fleshed out. The read was gripping and would have been greatly enhanced by a map of the town and its outlying fields and farmhouses.
Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
February 24, 2021
So many empty houses fill these dusty streets in this small town in Nebraska. People have left, some have died and those that remain harbor unimaginable griefs. Some are living desperate lives that they wish they could escape, some live on the best they are able. Harley, is the law in this town and his past haunts him still, as does the old house where once his family lived. But sometimes there is an event, a spark that sets unforseen things in motion. That's what happens here.
A slow burning rural noir. A first book that is well thought out and brilliantly executed. Things happen that we don't quite understand the significance of, but the tension is there and as more is revealed the tension mounts. The slow burning turns into to a blazing end. A young man loses his bearings and two women make very different decisions for their futures.
I expect more brilliant renderings from this author, she is a true talent. If you enjoyed Bull Mountain, I think you'll enjoy this. It doesn't have the same amount of violence, actually very little as it is more psychological than graphic. The feel though, for me, was similar.
ARC from Edelweiss
A slow burning rural noir. A first book that is well thought out and brilliantly executed. Things happen that we don't quite understand the significance of, but the tension is there and as more is revealed the tension mounts. The slow burning turns into to a blazing end. A young man loses his bearings and two women make very different decisions for their futures.
I expect more brilliant renderings from this author, she is a true talent. If you enjoyed Bull Mountain, I think you'll enjoy this. It doesn't have the same amount of violence, actually very little as it is more psychological than graphic. The feel though, for me, was similar.
ARC from Edelweiss
December 5, 2023
What a way to start off the new year! Chris Harding Thornton has written one of those debut novels, the sort that makes an author reluctant to publish a second book, lest it fail to live up to the first. Lucky me, I read it free; thanks go to Net Galley and Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. It’s for sale tomorrow, and those that love excellent working class fiction should get a copy right away.
The setting is rural Nebraska, for a single week in 1978. It’s one of those tiny towns where not only does everyone know everyone else, but also just about every single thing that has happened in the lives of everyone else. Or at least they think they do; gossip takes on a life of its own. We have three protagonists, and their points of view alternate, always in the third person omniscient. Harley Jensen, the deputy sheriff, opens the story; then we meet Pam Reddick, a miserable, trapped, 24 year old housewife living in a singlewide trailer with her baby and a husband who’s always working; and Rick, the man Pam is married to, who works for his father, buying and renovating old mobile homes. Now there’s a job for you.
Both of the men, Harley and Rick, are leading lives of avoidance. As a child, Harley found his mother on the kitchen floor after she blew her own face away with a shotgun. The table was set, and the gravy was just beginning to form a skin on top. Gravy boat; bare, dirty feet facing the door after she fell over; cane bottom chair, shotgun, and…yeah. So now Harley is middle aged, single, childless; he maintains a careful distance emotionally from everyone. He does his job, but he’s no Joe Friday. He maintains a stoic, lowkey demeanor most of the time, putting one foot in front of the other, so that people won’t look at him with pity, which is intolerable.
"People evidently needed that. They needed to know that you could overcome a thing like what happened here and keep going. That or you were just broken—more broken than they’d ever be. That worked fine, too. The one thing they couldn’t abide was that you just lived with it. You drank and slept and did laundry with it. You waited at the DMV and clocked in and out with it."
The opening scene in which we meet Harley finds him driving his usual patrol, eager to pass the last homestead he routinely checks for prowlers, vandals, or partiers. It is his parents’ home, now derelict and unsaleable. He prefers to zip past it, but he can’t today because there’s a truck down there. Turns out to be Paul Reddick, the wily, sociopathic brother of Rick, whom we’ve yet to meet. This scene is as tense and still as the air right before the tornado hits. It’s suffused with dread, and we don’t fully understand why yet. It sets the tone for the rest of the story.
Pam Reddick is too young to be so bitter, but it isn’t stopping her. She doesn’t love her husband, and if she ever did, we don’t see evidence of it. They are married because of Anna, their now-three-year-old daughter. This fact gives me pause, since Roe v. Wade came down in 1973; abortion is legal. But then I realize, first, that the Supreme Court made a ruling, but it didn’t furnish clinics, and an out-of-the-way place like Pickard County may never have had access. Pam and Rick have so little money that a trip to the nearest clinic and the payment for the procedure was about as likely as an all expense paid trip to Europe. No, she’d have that baby all right. And she has. But she has no enthusiasm for parenting or her daughter, who looks just like her daddy. Pam goes through the barest motions of motherhood, and only that much because her mother and her mother’s friends always seem to be watching.
Rick, on the other hand, is a guy you can’t help but feel sorry for. The entire Reddick family is a mess. Their father, who is a shyster, has more or less abandoned their mother, who has mental health problems, the severity of which depends on who is talking. The whole town knows about the night when, following the murder of her eldest son, she was seen in the backyard, stark naked, burning clothing in a barrel. His younger brother, Paul, whom we met earlier with Harley, uses street drugs and steals his mother’s prescriptions; he’s been in and out of trouble most of his life. Worse still, perhaps, is the fact—and it isn’t spelled out for us, but as the narrative unfolds, it becomes evident—that Paul is smarter than Rick. Nobody tells us Rick is stupid; rather, his inner monologue fixates on the mundane and tends to turn in circles.
And here, we can see also that poor Rick loves Pam and Anna deeply, and considers them the very best part of his young life; he counsels Paul to settle down, find someone like Pam so that he can have a good life, too. And while Rick knows that Pam is unhappy, he tells himself that she’s mad about nothing, that she’ll settle down. He’s working hard, and we can see that; the guy is a slob, but he’s industrious, on his back in the dirt ripping fiberglass out of an old trailer, stripping wallpaper, replacing pipes. And when he goes home, exhausted and reeking, his feet are sore and itching, and the thing he finds most soothing, and which makes Pam crazy, is rubbing his feet on the radiator until pieces of dead skin come off in strips, which he of course doesn’t clean up.
At this point, I’m ready to get my purse out and give Pam some get-away cash. I couldn’t live that way, either. The worst of it is that Rick is already doing his very best.
The plot unfolds like a burning tumbleweed descending a dry hillside, and it is masterfully written. Much of its brilliance lies in what is not said. There are probably half a dozen themes that bear study, for those so inclined. The violence and poverty are obvious, but more insidious is the way this county chews up the women that live there.
Another admirable aspect of the narrative is the restraint with which cultural artifacts are placed. We aren’t barraged with the headlines of 1978, or its music or movie actors. Thornton doesn’t take cheap shortcuts. Yet there are occasional subtle reminders: the television’s rabbit ears that have to be adjusted to get a decent picture; the Corelle casserole dish.
So, is this book worth your hard-earned money? If you haven’t figured that out by now, you’re no brighter than poor Rick. Go get this book now. Your own troubles will all look smaller when you’re done.
The setting is rural Nebraska, for a single week in 1978. It’s one of those tiny towns where not only does everyone know everyone else, but also just about every single thing that has happened in the lives of everyone else. Or at least they think they do; gossip takes on a life of its own. We have three protagonists, and their points of view alternate, always in the third person omniscient. Harley Jensen, the deputy sheriff, opens the story; then we meet Pam Reddick, a miserable, trapped, 24 year old housewife living in a singlewide trailer with her baby and a husband who’s always working; and Rick, the man Pam is married to, who works for his father, buying and renovating old mobile homes. Now there’s a job for you.
Both of the men, Harley and Rick, are leading lives of avoidance. As a child, Harley found his mother on the kitchen floor after she blew her own face away with a shotgun. The table was set, and the gravy was just beginning to form a skin on top. Gravy boat; bare, dirty feet facing the door after she fell over; cane bottom chair, shotgun, and…yeah. So now Harley is middle aged, single, childless; he maintains a careful distance emotionally from everyone. He does his job, but he’s no Joe Friday. He maintains a stoic, lowkey demeanor most of the time, putting one foot in front of the other, so that people won’t look at him with pity, which is intolerable.
"People evidently needed that. They needed to know that you could overcome a thing like what happened here and keep going. That or you were just broken—more broken than they’d ever be. That worked fine, too. The one thing they couldn’t abide was that you just lived with it. You drank and slept and did laundry with it. You waited at the DMV and clocked in and out with it."
The opening scene in which we meet Harley finds him driving his usual patrol, eager to pass the last homestead he routinely checks for prowlers, vandals, or partiers. It is his parents’ home, now derelict and unsaleable. He prefers to zip past it, but he can’t today because there’s a truck down there. Turns out to be Paul Reddick, the wily, sociopathic brother of Rick, whom we’ve yet to meet. This scene is as tense and still as the air right before the tornado hits. It’s suffused with dread, and we don’t fully understand why yet. It sets the tone for the rest of the story.
Pam Reddick is too young to be so bitter, but it isn’t stopping her. She doesn’t love her husband, and if she ever did, we don’t see evidence of it. They are married because of Anna, their now-three-year-old daughter. This fact gives me pause, since Roe v. Wade came down in 1973; abortion is legal. But then I realize, first, that the Supreme Court made a ruling, but it didn’t furnish clinics, and an out-of-the-way place like Pickard County may never have had access. Pam and Rick have so little money that a trip to the nearest clinic and the payment for the procedure was about as likely as an all expense paid trip to Europe. No, she’d have that baby all right. And she has. But she has no enthusiasm for parenting or her daughter, who looks just like her daddy. Pam goes through the barest motions of motherhood, and only that much because her mother and her mother’s friends always seem to be watching.
Rick, on the other hand, is a guy you can’t help but feel sorry for. The entire Reddick family is a mess. Their father, who is a shyster, has more or less abandoned their mother, who has mental health problems, the severity of which depends on who is talking. The whole town knows about the night when, following the murder of her eldest son, she was seen in the backyard, stark naked, burning clothing in a barrel. His younger brother, Paul, whom we met earlier with Harley, uses street drugs and steals his mother’s prescriptions; he’s been in and out of trouble most of his life. Worse still, perhaps, is the fact—and it isn’t spelled out for us, but as the narrative unfolds, it becomes evident—that Paul is smarter than Rick. Nobody tells us Rick is stupid; rather, his inner monologue fixates on the mundane and tends to turn in circles.
And here, we can see also that poor Rick loves Pam and Anna deeply, and considers them the very best part of his young life; he counsels Paul to settle down, find someone like Pam so that he can have a good life, too. And while Rick knows that Pam is unhappy, he tells himself that she’s mad about nothing, that she’ll settle down. He’s working hard, and we can see that; the guy is a slob, but he’s industrious, on his back in the dirt ripping fiberglass out of an old trailer, stripping wallpaper, replacing pipes. And when he goes home, exhausted and reeking, his feet are sore and itching, and the thing he finds most soothing, and which makes Pam crazy, is rubbing his feet on the radiator until pieces of dead skin come off in strips, which he of course doesn’t clean up.
At this point, I’m ready to get my purse out and give Pam some get-away cash. I couldn’t live that way, either. The worst of it is that Rick is already doing his very best.
The plot unfolds like a burning tumbleweed descending a dry hillside, and it is masterfully written. Much of its brilliance lies in what is not said. There are probably half a dozen themes that bear study, for those so inclined. The violence and poverty are obvious, but more insidious is the way this county chews up the women that live there.
Another admirable aspect of the narrative is the restraint with which cultural artifacts are placed. We aren’t barraged with the headlines of 1978, or its music or movie actors. Thornton doesn’t take cheap shortcuts. Yet there are occasional subtle reminders: the television’s rabbit ears that have to be adjusted to get a decent picture; the Corelle casserole dish.
So, is this book worth your hard-earned money? If you haven’t figured that out by now, you’re no brighter than poor Rick. Go get this book now. Your own troubles will all look smaller when you’re done.
May 1, 2021
2.5 stars
I had a hard time staying focused on this one. It could have been what I thought was its wordiness, or it could give been the accent of the narrator. I didn't think Nebraskans had such an accent, but I could be wrong.
The characters were not likeable overall, and not the kind you love to hate either. The sheriff could have been a nice fellow, but I didn't get to know him very well.
Some may enjoy the descriptive prose found here, but I felt it needed some editing down in spots, to just get to the point.
These are just my impressions and it's very likely that many will enjoy it more than I did.
I had a hard time staying focused on this one. It could have been what I thought was its wordiness, or it could give been the accent of the narrator. I didn't think Nebraskans had such an accent, but I could be wrong.
The characters were not likeable overall, and not the kind you love to hate either. The sheriff could have been a nice fellow, but I didn't get to know him very well.
Some may enjoy the descriptive prose found here, but I felt it needed some editing down in spots, to just get to the point.
These are just my impressions and it's very likely that many will enjoy it more than I did.
August 22, 2021
Abandonment is the centerpiece of many folk tales. Hansel and Gretel, and Beauty and the Beast are examples of this theme. The normal trajectory is of the happy ending where the children triumph over the forces of evil through pluck and virtue. Adult abandonment, in contrast, seldom ends well. A shocking vortex of rage, revenge and self-destruction generally ensues.
Chris Harding Thornton plants subtle instances of abandonment throughout her novel -- abandonment by suicide, emotional distancing, and even physical distancing. The result is a slow-burning tension that gradually tightens, almost suffocates, as the ending approaches.
She begins with the inanimate, the numerous abandoned houses in Pickard County, a depressed rural Nebraska locale. By focusing on the abandoned homesteads, Thornton suggests this is the norm, a norm that makes the characters nearly oblivious to grief and tragedy.
Inspecting the abandoned properties fills a good part of Deputy Harly Jensen's nightshift patrol: “Since the firebug had holed up in the Jipp place awhile, Harley checked other abandoned homesteads, ones off the beaten path on country roads. He checked the Schneider place, then the Rasmussen house. Both had stood empty since the fifties, the land snatched up by neighbors with shining new combines no good for anything but wheat. The houses were boarded up and locked.” (p.90)
It's now on the cusp of the 1980's. No wonder, the houses have a haunted aspect, holding fast to their grim secrets of family tragedy. Harley grew up in such a house. The Jensen homestead is now empty but Harley is drawn to it, the slightest provocation releasing a nearly obsessive nightly vigil even as he tries to put the memory of a nightmarish incident behind him.
The Reddick boys experienced an abandonment of a different sort. Eighteen years ago their seven year old brother Dell Junior was murdered by a psychotic war veteran, Rollie Asher. Asher then committed suicide without telling anyone what he did with the body. An intensive search by the police, including Harley, proved fruitless. Virginia Reddick the mother never recovered. The final blow was when her brutish husband Dell Senior collected some ash, mixed it with some children's clothes that he burned and presented them as cremated remains. He never notices that the clothes he burned were not Dell Juniors' but Rick's, his other son's. Dell Senior then abandons his wife and the two children, Rick and four-year-old Paul. He pays for the household upkeep but never again sets foot in the house or speaks to his wife. Eighteen years later he finally has a tombstone carved for a still empty grave and holds a memorial service. The charade is a macabre reminder that no one has been able to move on.
None of the characters in this book are sympathetic. Dell Senior runs a dodgy rehabbing business based on cosmetic fixes and quick sales. Rick and Paul work for him for paltry wages. Rick has a wife and toddler to support. They live in a trailer which Pam describes with increasing hopelessness and despair: “There was nowhere to go but back. Back to that sweltering, ramshackle, wood-paneled can. Back to that broken storm door and those shitty towels and Anna's stare of perpetual alarm. Back to Rick and his torn-up jeans and his dead foot skin.” (p.56) Rick's only answer to her complaints is that they're “getting by.” It is that inertia that Pam has been coming to hate.
Pam's mother Babe offers blunt advice: that's what life is about – enduring. It's what small town life, at least in this novel, is all about. Harley voices that sentiment much later: “It was what people wanted. To know after a thing like that you'd either overcome or succumbed. You'd moved on or were more broken than they'd ever be. If you didn't persevere, you could be evil or crazy, either or both worked fine, so long as you were something outside what they knew.” (p.269) Empathy is not part of the DNA of this repressed social enclave.
We view Rick and Pam through extended passages of introspection. It is a painful view of a dangerously fraying relationship. The person we hear the most from directly is Paul, Rick's brother. Rick claims Paul remembers nothing of the tragedy surrounding Dell Junior's murder. He's wrong. Paul scoffs at Rick's excuses for their harsh father, calling the old man a prick, plain and simple. He accuses Rick of seeing only what he wants to see. Paul has been blamed for a series of accidental deaths of children he grew up with. It is significant that Paul remains an enigma. We hear his sly taunts but never hear what he is really thinking. He projects a feral shrewdness.
Despite their unsympathetic actions, Thornton does make us care about these characters. This is the real hold that the book has on the reader.
Chris Harding Thornton plants subtle instances of abandonment throughout her novel -- abandonment by suicide, emotional distancing, and even physical distancing. The result is a slow-burning tension that gradually tightens, almost suffocates, as the ending approaches.
She begins with the inanimate, the numerous abandoned houses in Pickard County, a depressed rural Nebraska locale. By focusing on the abandoned homesteads, Thornton suggests this is the norm, a norm that makes the characters nearly oblivious to grief and tragedy.
Inspecting the abandoned properties fills a good part of Deputy Harly Jensen's nightshift patrol: “Since the firebug had holed up in the Jipp place awhile, Harley checked other abandoned homesteads, ones off the beaten path on country roads. He checked the Schneider place, then the Rasmussen house. Both had stood empty since the fifties, the land snatched up by neighbors with shining new combines no good for anything but wheat. The houses were boarded up and locked.” (p.90)
It's now on the cusp of the 1980's. No wonder, the houses have a haunted aspect, holding fast to their grim secrets of family tragedy. Harley grew up in such a house. The Jensen homestead is now empty but Harley is drawn to it, the slightest provocation releasing a nearly obsessive nightly vigil even as he tries to put the memory of a nightmarish incident behind him.
The Reddick boys experienced an abandonment of a different sort. Eighteen years ago their seven year old brother Dell Junior was murdered by a psychotic war veteran, Rollie Asher. Asher then committed suicide without telling anyone what he did with the body. An intensive search by the police, including Harley, proved fruitless. Virginia Reddick the mother never recovered. The final blow was when her brutish husband Dell Senior collected some ash, mixed it with some children's clothes that he burned and presented them as cremated remains. He never notices that the clothes he burned were not Dell Juniors' but Rick's, his other son's. Dell Senior then abandons his wife and the two children, Rick and four-year-old Paul. He pays for the household upkeep but never again sets foot in the house or speaks to his wife. Eighteen years later he finally has a tombstone carved for a still empty grave and holds a memorial service. The charade is a macabre reminder that no one has been able to move on.
None of the characters in this book are sympathetic. Dell Senior runs a dodgy rehabbing business based on cosmetic fixes and quick sales. Rick and Paul work for him for paltry wages. Rick has a wife and toddler to support. They live in a trailer which Pam describes with increasing hopelessness and despair: “There was nowhere to go but back. Back to that sweltering, ramshackle, wood-paneled can. Back to that broken storm door and those shitty towels and Anna's stare of perpetual alarm. Back to Rick and his torn-up jeans and his dead foot skin.” (p.56) Rick's only answer to her complaints is that they're “getting by.” It is that inertia that Pam has been coming to hate.
Pam's mother Babe offers blunt advice: that's what life is about – enduring. It's what small town life, at least in this novel, is all about. Harley voices that sentiment much later: “It was what people wanted. To know after a thing like that you'd either overcome or succumbed. You'd moved on or were more broken than they'd ever be. If you didn't persevere, you could be evil or crazy, either or both worked fine, so long as you were something outside what they knew.” (p.269) Empathy is not part of the DNA of this repressed social enclave.
We view Rick and Pam through extended passages of introspection. It is a painful view of a dangerously fraying relationship. The person we hear the most from directly is Paul, Rick's brother. Rick claims Paul remembers nothing of the tragedy surrounding Dell Junior's murder. He's wrong. Paul scoffs at Rick's excuses for their harsh father, calling the old man a prick, plain and simple. He accuses Rick of seeing only what he wants to see. Paul has been blamed for a series of accidental deaths of children he grew up with. It is significant that Paul remains an enigma. We hear his sly taunts but never hear what he is really thinking. He projects a feral shrewdness.
Despite their unsympathetic actions, Thornton does make us care about these characters. This is the real hold that the book has on the reader.
November 19, 2020
3.5 stars
In the summer of 1978 the Reddick family has been grieving the loss of seven-year-old Dell Jr. for 18 years. His mama Virginia has never gotten over the fact that his body was never found and is upset to learn her estranged husband has finally filed paperwork to declare him legally dead and held a service with no body to lay to rest. Dell Jr.’s brothers, Rick and Paul, have lived their lives in the shadow his absence has cast.
Now Virginia has left without a word and Paul claims he’s not worried; she’s just out looking for Dell Jr.’s body.
Meanwhile, Rick is working to keep food on the table for his family. His wife Pam is unhappy with the choices she’s made and is struggling with her marriage, motherhood, and lack of options.
Just down the road, Pickard County deputy Harley Jensen is investigating some strange incidents in their small town. Abandoned farmhouses are going up in flames, homes are being broken in to during funerals and random items stolen. Jensen himself knows about loss; his mama took her own life when he was just a kid.
Something about the Reddicks, Paul in particular, crawls under his skin and he’s focused on catching him in the act. However, he loses his focus when he meets Pam for the first time, setting off a chain of events that began long before the summer of ’78.
A fine piece of rural noir, Pickard County Atlas has a strong cast of characters and this gripping story gives readers a look into the effects of trauma in a small Nebraska town. I recommend this book to readers who enjoy crime, grit lit / rural noir, and family dramas.
Thanks to NetGalley and FSGxMCD for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. Pickard County Atlas is scheduled for release on January 5, 2021.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
In the summer of 1978 the Reddick family has been grieving the loss of seven-year-old Dell Jr. for 18 years. His mama Virginia has never gotten over the fact that his body was never found and is upset to learn her estranged husband has finally filed paperwork to declare him legally dead and held a service with no body to lay to rest. Dell Jr.’s brothers, Rick and Paul, have lived their lives in the shadow his absence has cast.
Now Virginia has left without a word and Paul claims he’s not worried; she’s just out looking for Dell Jr.’s body.
Meanwhile, Rick is working to keep food on the table for his family. His wife Pam is unhappy with the choices she’s made and is struggling with her marriage, motherhood, and lack of options.
Just down the road, Pickard County deputy Harley Jensen is investigating some strange incidents in their small town. Abandoned farmhouses are going up in flames, homes are being broken in to during funerals and random items stolen. Jensen himself knows about loss; his mama took her own life when he was just a kid.
Something about the Reddicks, Paul in particular, crawls under his skin and he’s focused on catching him in the act. However, he loses his focus when he meets Pam for the first time, setting off a chain of events that began long before the summer of ’78.
A fine piece of rural noir, Pickard County Atlas has a strong cast of characters and this gripping story gives readers a look into the effects of trauma in a small Nebraska town. I recommend this book to readers who enjoy crime, grit lit / rural noir, and family dramas.
Thanks to NetGalley and FSGxMCD for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. Pickard County Atlas is scheduled for release on January 5, 2021.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
August 25, 2021
I first reviewed this novel more than a year ago, but almost as soon as I posted it I felt unsatisfied by it, and finally that still small critic's voice in my head grew in volume enough to get me to give PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS another look.
Where before I found sluggish and a shortage of incident, I found nuanced rage, insanity and heartbreak among characters barely able to articulate the different language they speak inside. And yet this is not a story of stultifying, moody interiority. It is incident simmering just under the surface, there to see for anyone who takes the time and patience to see it. I didn't that first time around, and that's on me. I'm glad I went back to the well of PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS; I drew deeper water this time, and feel more deeply satisfied as a result.
*****
"There’d been a time when everything about Rick she now couldn’t see or stand drew her in. That look of his that wrung her out—yearning and sadness all tangled together. It had a mystique, she guessed. About five months into being pregnant, she remembered where she’d seen that look. In a cat out at her folks’ barn who’d gotten into some antifreeze."
"Your best options were to be born lucky, inherit a cow-calf operation as the only child of parents not prone to longevity, or walk beans and detassel corn with junior high kids for two bucks a day while you waited for the school janitor to keel over."
Some fine atmospheric writing here, and it takes some devoted reading to see past the haze to the horizon of something different. The stakes seem deceptively low and the characters seem deceptively gauzy (one exception is Pam, the young mom and wife who neither wants to be a mom or a wife, or even a daughter, but can't seem to summon quite enough will to walk away from either her husband or her child or parents despite an increasing sense of desperation that drives her into the arms of the first man to show her even a molecule of understanding and grace; her presence on every page is a silent wildfire), and the story seems to chug along in a choppy second gear toward, never achieving the liftoff that its opening confrontations suggest.
"Seems" is the operative word here.. All that deceptive glide collides as abruptly as it cast of characters on one dark night inside a dark barn, where delusion and desperation and an inability to outrun reality even on an expansive stretch of land explodes into accusations, flames, guilt and gunfire. If you missed all the cool combustibility in the chilling heat, like me at first you were not paying close enough attention. And PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS is the kind of novel that deserves your undivided attention. And rewards it.
"Maybe she just wasn’t cut out for any of this. Maybe it was like how some people were naturally good at math and others were good at spelling; maybe other people were naturals at playing house and forgetting that they were going to die and that all the people they knew were going to die. Maybe other people could live with how keeping people around only reminded you of how fast you were all going and they were okay with lapsing into the dream of it, the dream of constant faces and places every day, and maybe it didn’t scare the ever-living sh** out of them when they woke up every once in a while, just long enough to realize their whole life was gone in a haze of vacuuming and figuring out bills and patching crotches of jeans. Maybe that was just it. She pulled the door shut behind her."
Where before I found sluggish and a shortage of incident, I found nuanced rage, insanity and heartbreak among characters barely able to articulate the different language they speak inside. And yet this is not a story of stultifying, moody interiority. It is incident simmering just under the surface, there to see for anyone who takes the time and patience to see it. I didn't that first time around, and that's on me. I'm glad I went back to the well of PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS; I drew deeper water this time, and feel more deeply satisfied as a result.
*****
"There’d been a time when everything about Rick she now couldn’t see or stand drew her in. That look of his that wrung her out—yearning and sadness all tangled together. It had a mystique, she guessed. About five months into being pregnant, she remembered where she’d seen that look. In a cat out at her folks’ barn who’d gotten into some antifreeze."
"Your best options were to be born lucky, inherit a cow-calf operation as the only child of parents not prone to longevity, or walk beans and detassel corn with junior high kids for two bucks a day while you waited for the school janitor to keel over."
Some fine atmospheric writing here, and it takes some devoted reading to see past the haze to the horizon of something different. The stakes seem deceptively low and the characters seem deceptively gauzy (one exception is Pam, the young mom and wife who neither wants to be a mom or a wife, or even a daughter, but can't seem to summon quite enough will to walk away from either her husband or her child or parents despite an increasing sense of desperation that drives her into the arms of the first man to show her even a molecule of understanding and grace; her presence on every page is a silent wildfire), and the story seems to chug along in a choppy second gear toward, never achieving the liftoff that its opening confrontations suggest.
"Seems" is the operative word here.. All that deceptive glide collides as abruptly as it cast of characters on one dark night inside a dark barn, where delusion and desperation and an inability to outrun reality even on an expansive stretch of land explodes into accusations, flames, guilt and gunfire. If you missed all the cool combustibility in the chilling heat, like me at first you were not paying close enough attention. And PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS is the kind of novel that deserves your undivided attention. And rewards it.
"Maybe she just wasn’t cut out for any of this. Maybe it was like how some people were naturally good at math and others were good at spelling; maybe other people were naturals at playing house and forgetting that they were going to die and that all the people they knew were going to die. Maybe other people could live with how keeping people around only reminded you of how fast you were all going and they were okay with lapsing into the dream of it, the dream of constant faces and places every day, and maybe it didn’t scare the ever-living sh** out of them when they woke up every once in a while, just long enough to realize their whole life was gone in a haze of vacuuming and figuring out bills and patching crotches of jeans. Maybe that was just it. She pulled the door shut behind her."
April 1, 2021
A literary, haunting, stunning exploration of how the past chains us down. One of my favorite reads of ‘21. Absolutely incredible.
January 2, 2021
Pickard County Atlas is a great title for this debut by a very gifted writer. Set in a small town with all the interwoven histories simmering very close to the surface, the memory of the murder of a seven-year-old boy 18 years earlier causes emotions to erupt. Gotta say that for a relatively small place, there is a lot of toxicity going on here. Chris Thornton's powers of description are acute, life in a trailer park is brought vividly to life. I look forward to what comes next.
January 18, 2021
I won this book in a goodreads drawing.
In a dying, isolated part of Nebraska, nothing much happens, except a kid was killed some years ago, affecting everyone in the town. When a corpse's clothes are stolen during a funeral, it might lead back to the murder.
Fairly good rural noir.
In a dying, isolated part of Nebraska, nothing much happens, except a kid was killed some years ago, affecting everyone in the town. When a corpse's clothes are stolen during a funeral, it might lead back to the murder.
Fairly good rural noir.
July 20, 2025
A very sad story
January 25, 2021
The main theme of this is: wrong assumptions have consequences. In a small town in Nebraska populated by abandoned houses and trailers hides a secret. Deputy Sheriff Harley patrols the streets at night as old houses are being burned and a rash of burglaries are happening. Is he trying to enforce the law or looking to exact some kind of payback? Meanwhile Pam is unhappy and trying to find a way out. The writing and atmosphere of this story is more akin to Southern noir and writers like Panowich, Brown and Joy. A well written book with some wonderful characters, especially Pam.
January 11, 2021
PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS was the last book I picked up to read in 2020 and the first I finished in 2021. It was a terrific way to end one year and begin a new one. The quality of the plotting and writing are equally high, and I was thrilled to discover Chris Harding Thornton, who is now on my must-read list.
Thornton is, by her own description, a seventh-generation Nebraskan whose day gig is a professorship at the University of Nebraska, the institution where she acquired her PhD. This is her debut novel (she also has published a very limited collection of short stories), and the book’s 1978 Nebraska setting is as far removed from the ivy halls of academia as might be possible.
The Pickard County of the title is a fictional but all-too-real location where hardscrabble poverty is a mind-numbing reality for many. As a result, the king of the hill is Dell Reddick, whose family business is repairing or repurposing house trailers, depending in large part on their condition. He is aided by his sons, Rick and Paul. The memory of their deceased older brother hangs over the family and casts a dark, tragic shadow. Dell Jr. was killed when he was seven years old by a disturbed individual who readily confessed to what he had done. The problem is that he never told anyone what he did with the boy’s corpse. As the novel begins, Dell is conducting a funeral for his dead son some 17 years later, a ceremony without a body.
Rather than providing closure, the event further tears open emotional wounds that have never healed, particularly for Virginia, Dell Jr.’s mother. Rick, meanwhile, seems too capable of doing more than working at substandard wages for his father but does not have the fortitude to do so. This is a situation that chafes at his wife, Pam, who vaguely envisions a life far away from her parents, her husband and their three-year-old daughter.
Harley Jensen, the local deputy sheriff, has been a native of Pickard County for almost five decades and is well-settled into his 12-to-14-hour nightshifts other than for the occasional run-in with Paul Reddick, a lost soul who seems to be at or near whatever trouble occurs in the county. When Virginia goes missing after the funeral, Harley’s patrols become more intense, which leads him to a chance encounter with Pam, whose restless nighttime wanderings will cause a chain reaction of consequences beginning in her own home and radiating outward. One can foresee some but not all of the results, which continue to play out through the book’s last page and beyond.
Thornton is reportedly working on a second novel, and it cannot come soon enough for me. My copy of this one is well-highlighted over her numerous and wonderful turns of phrase and descriptions, which beg to be reread until her next offering appears. There certainly seems to be enough potential for additional tales and trouble in her fictional Nebraska county to fill several more books. Anyone who reads PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS will want to see if that is true.
Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
Thornton is, by her own description, a seventh-generation Nebraskan whose day gig is a professorship at the University of Nebraska, the institution where she acquired her PhD. This is her debut novel (she also has published a very limited collection of short stories), and the book’s 1978 Nebraska setting is as far removed from the ivy halls of academia as might be possible.
The Pickard County of the title is a fictional but all-too-real location where hardscrabble poverty is a mind-numbing reality for many. As a result, the king of the hill is Dell Reddick, whose family business is repairing or repurposing house trailers, depending in large part on their condition. He is aided by his sons, Rick and Paul. The memory of their deceased older brother hangs over the family and casts a dark, tragic shadow. Dell Jr. was killed when he was seven years old by a disturbed individual who readily confessed to what he had done. The problem is that he never told anyone what he did with the boy’s corpse. As the novel begins, Dell is conducting a funeral for his dead son some 17 years later, a ceremony without a body.
Rather than providing closure, the event further tears open emotional wounds that have never healed, particularly for Virginia, Dell Jr.’s mother. Rick, meanwhile, seems too capable of doing more than working at substandard wages for his father but does not have the fortitude to do so. This is a situation that chafes at his wife, Pam, who vaguely envisions a life far away from her parents, her husband and their three-year-old daughter.
Harley Jensen, the local deputy sheriff, has been a native of Pickard County for almost five decades and is well-settled into his 12-to-14-hour nightshifts other than for the occasional run-in with Paul Reddick, a lost soul who seems to be at or near whatever trouble occurs in the county. When Virginia goes missing after the funeral, Harley’s patrols become more intense, which leads him to a chance encounter with Pam, whose restless nighttime wanderings will cause a chain reaction of consequences beginning in her own home and radiating outward. One can foresee some but not all of the results, which continue to play out through the book’s last page and beyond.
Thornton is reportedly working on a second novel, and it cannot come soon enough for me. My copy of this one is well-highlighted over her numerous and wonderful turns of phrase and descriptions, which beg to be reread until her next offering appears. There certainly seems to be enough potential for additional tales and trouble in her fictional Nebraska county to fill several more books. Anyone who reads PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS will want to see if that is true.
Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
March 20, 2021
This is one hell of a debut. In less capable hands it could have been a mess, but the writing is so tight and the characters are so well constructed that it all absolutely works. My coffee got cold while I was tearing through those last 50 pages. Damn.
February 14, 2021
“The box fan in the trailer window moved the morning air but didn’t cool it. Pam was being cooked. She was being cooked like those hobos her mother once told her had roasted in a freight car”.
I found this to be a powerful novel, authentically depicting characters living on the edge in rural Nebraska, “one blown tire from living in a cardboard box”. It’s much more than a story about people trapped in a cycle of poverty, but the setting defines the lives and actions of the characters. I thought the writing was clear and honest, details earlier in the book would re-emerge in intriguing ways tying together different aspects of the plot. There is no question in my mind that the author is writing about what she knows giving the reader both a good story and some genuine understanding about the struggle faced by people who are living a day to day existence.
I found this to be a powerful novel, authentically depicting characters living on the edge in rural Nebraska, “one blown tire from living in a cardboard box”. It’s much more than a story about people trapped in a cycle of poverty, but the setting defines the lives and actions of the characters. I thought the writing was clear and honest, details earlier in the book would re-emerge in intriguing ways tying together different aspects of the plot. There is no question in my mind that the author is writing about what she knows giving the reader both a good story and some genuine understanding about the struggle faced by people who are living a day to day existence.
January 25, 2021
Slow start but hooked me. For me, the book does not have an ending. It just wanders to a halt, leaving questions with imagined answers. In that sense, it was unsatisfying. On the other hand, isn’t that life?
February 15, 2021
Pickard County Atlas by Chris Harding Thornton unfolds during a July 1978 summer in rural Nebraska and is told in alternating chapters featuring a handful of primary characters.
As the story is told, each character, haunted by their past, seems to be attempting to seek respite, redemption, or eradication from their own ghosts—whether or not they have been earned through faults of their own. Each of these characters, from a worn-down county deputy to a roaming disenchanted young wife and mother, to a family with a violent past, exists in a small county where one small act or encounter may lead to the possibility of further violence and turmoil.
Pickard County Atlas could be referred to as “Country Noir,” however, the novel is not an extremely dark novel, but instead a truthful examination of how people deal with such ghosts and haunts of their past.
This review of Pickard County Atlas has been one of the more difficult I have written. The reason for this is the less you the reader knows about the novel beforehand, the more enhanced the writing and story will be.
The descriptive writing in this debut novel is richly exquisite. Descriptions of simple acts, such as how time and distance can be measured by the click of an odometer digit or the use of a metal, flip-top cigarette lighter, found throughout the novel are assembled in almost poetic rhythm, with not a wasted, lost, or overused word.
While reading this novel, the author evokes black and white mental imagery similar to that found in films such as Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show. Mental imagery such as dilapidated, empty buildings, contrails of dust caused by tires on a gravel road, and people hewed rough and ragged by a tough life. In your mind, while reading this novel you could hear crickets at night, smell the drying vegetation and imagine the brightness of stars at night.
Pickard County Atlas is highly recommended to readers who enjoy novels described as “Country Noir” and by readers fond of the writings of authors like Larry Brown.
This review was originally published at MysteryandSuspense.com.
March 4, 2021
This is an interesting read with some smart insights and great language. The timeframe is late 1970s and the scene is Nebraska, although you would not necessarily know this by the contents of the book. The characters are alternatively engaging, then infuriating. Their minds range from insightful to mentally unstable, and I'm talking about each individual character! The novel revolves around one particular family and a law enforcement officer whose own family life is filled with tragedy. How these family histories affect the characters is as interesting as the plot, which actually is rather minimal. Searching for a missing mother and remembering the search for a murdered son are heartbreaking but also symbolic of how these characters' lives are going nowhere. The one character that breaks out seems brazen at times and then absolutely cruel. This is an auspicious debut novel, but it can be a grueling read at times.
July 30, 2021
Among the weirdest books I have read in years. Gorgeous, minute descriptions of clothes, skin, trailers, etc etc -- and empathic insights and understandings of the characters -- who are among the most unusually erudite for non-book-reading, high school dropout, absolute hand-to-mouth poverty-struck characters.
An uncomfortable book that went nowhere, with emotionally-damaged survivors, unloving parents (all of them), and an ending that defines non sequitur.
I don't think I will read this book a second time.
An uncomfortable book that went nowhere, with emotionally-damaged survivors, unloving parents (all of them), and an ending that defines non sequitur.
I don't think I will read this book a second time.
April 14, 2021
Pickard County, a rural area of farms and very small towns in Nebraska, is not an easy place to live. Harley Jensen works as a sheriff's deputy, patrolling the lonely rural highways and abandoned farmhouses at night. Pam Reddick, who married and had a child before she was ready, is slowly drowning, isolated in a trailer with a very young child she wishes she wasn't responsible for, as her husband works long hours for far too little money. They're both restless, but what pulls them together is the Reddick family and the tragedy that defines them. When the three Reddick boys were young, the oldest boy disappeared and his body was never found. Harley is haunted by the one case his department never solved and Pam, married to the middle son, lives with the after effects of that event and how it formed her husband.
Set over a few days, this novel explores the tragic roots of old sorrows and how they affect the living. There's a lot of dark roads, messed up families, repressed feelings, drugs and hopelessness in these pages. Everyone knows your family's secrets and are eager to spread word about any bad behavior, distances are measured in how much gas you have left in the tank and a body can lie hidden for decades.
I'm not entirely sure what I think about this one. The imaginary Pickard County is richly imagined, but often described in ways someone without that visual map in their heads had no way of following. The characters were nuanced and vivid and the ending was very well done, but the story was sometimes self-indulgent, like a story turned over a few too many times. Still, I'm always happy to find a new author writing in a noir-like vein and I'll take a look at whatever she writes next.
Set over a few days, this novel explores the tragic roots of old sorrows and how they affect the living. There's a lot of dark roads, messed up families, repressed feelings, drugs and hopelessness in these pages. Everyone knows your family's secrets and are eager to spread word about any bad behavior, distances are measured in how much gas you have left in the tank and a body can lie hidden for decades.
I'm not entirely sure what I think about this one. The imaginary Pickard County is richly imagined, but often described in ways someone without that visual map in their heads had no way of following. The characters were nuanced and vivid and the ending was very well done, but the story was sometimes self-indulgent, like a story turned over a few too many times. Still, I'm always happy to find a new author writing in a noir-like vein and I'll take a look at whatever she writes next.
March 5, 2022
Book was so good I even read the acknowledgments. It’s a must-read.
October 23, 2021
This is an engaging rural Nebraska noir set in the late 1970's, written by debut author and seventh generation Nebraskan Chris Harding Thornton. It starts slowly but once it gets rolling at the 70% mark or so, I was hooked.
March 4, 2021
IMO, this debut novel that's getting a lot of buzz is just okay. The main characters are fairly well drawn, regardless of how irritating they all are. And the author does a good job of describing the locale—late 1970s rural Nebraska in the dying heartland. But, the plot is weak and occasionally confusing. In fact, the last few chapters that should have resolved everything? I'm still scratching my head trying to figure it out. Her use of language seems to me to be overly self-conscious, deliberately trying to be too much of whatever it is she's trying for. The descriptions and dialogue feel forced...I'm very conscious I'm reading a story vs. getting caught up in the story and swept along. Another reviewer described the prose as feeling "workshopped" and "professor-pleasing." Yep, that's what it reads like. Meh.
January 23, 2021
Everything about this debut novel is so well done. It is beautifully written, the rare "literary" thriller. Though, thriller might be stretching the truth. This is less a page-turner than a thoughtful, slow-motion, character-driven tragedy. Set in rural Nebraska, circa 1978, Thornton does a beautiful job painting the time and place, never once resorting to the easy cliche.
Despite my admiration of this novel, I can't honestly say it was an enjoyable read. It's peopled with characters living sordid lives of quiet desperation. It is a testament to the author's skill how difficult it was to spend time with them.
Despite my admiration of this novel, I can't honestly say it was an enjoyable read. It's peopled with characters living sordid lives of quiet desperation. It is a testament to the author's skill how difficult it was to spend time with them.
April 9, 2021
I was drawn to this novel via the great reviews on Goodreads and especially those reviews written by my Goodreads ‘friends’ and boy, it certainly lives up to those excellent reviews.
It’s 1979 and Harley Jensen is a deputy who patrols Pickard County, permanently on the graveyard shift, mainly checking all the abandoned and empty properties which proliferate the countryside. These properties also include his own boyhood home, where his mother committed suicide many years before, an incident that still haunts Harley after all these years. The Reddick family also reside in the county and their oldest son Dell Jnr. was murdered some 18 years previous but his body has never been recovered and this has torn their family apart. Dell Senior has finally signed off on his sons death and erected a headstone in his honour. His wife Virginia went off the rails following her son’s death and split from her husband and now resides with her youngest Paul. Both Paul and his older brother Rick work for their father, stripping out and remodelling old trailer homes. Rick is married to Pam and they have a young daughter Anna but for Pam the spark has gone out of their marriage and she feels trapped. She sees to her daughter’s basic needs but there is very little maternal love there and Pam feels that her young daughters feelings are reciprocal. Harley has a hair up his ass for Paul, as the young man, although not always responsible for the towns trouble is always there or thereabouts. While on patrol one night Harley encounters Pam Reddick and this meeting sets off a chain of events that threatens all their futures.
This is a brilliant debut novel which revolves around the goings on in a small Nebraskan county, where crimes and incidents of the past still impact on the lives of the inhabitants and where old grudges don’t go unforgotten or forgiven. Harley’s mother’s death still haunts him, so much so that he finds it difficult to even enter his old home for fear of the memories that may return. The death of Dell Jnr. has also left an indelible mark on all of the Reddick family despite the years that have passed. The inhabitants that are left within the county are all old and are just barely living out their days but their minds still recall past indiscretions by their neighbours. I initially found the story a bit slow and it took me a little while to get into the rhythm and feel of the prose but the second half of the novel really takes off. I found the ending thoroughly engrossing and honestly had no idea how it was all going to play out, especially with all the main characters having a different conception of what was going on.
Chris Harding Thornton has really set the bar high with this debut and I’m already looking forward to her future publications.
It’s 1979 and Harley Jensen is a deputy who patrols Pickard County, permanently on the graveyard shift, mainly checking all the abandoned and empty properties which proliferate the countryside. These properties also include his own boyhood home, where his mother committed suicide many years before, an incident that still haunts Harley after all these years. The Reddick family also reside in the county and their oldest son Dell Jnr. was murdered some 18 years previous but his body has never been recovered and this has torn their family apart. Dell Senior has finally signed off on his sons death and erected a headstone in his honour. His wife Virginia went off the rails following her son’s death and split from her husband and now resides with her youngest Paul. Both Paul and his older brother Rick work for their father, stripping out and remodelling old trailer homes. Rick is married to Pam and they have a young daughter Anna but for Pam the spark has gone out of their marriage and she feels trapped. She sees to her daughter’s basic needs but there is very little maternal love there and Pam feels that her young daughters feelings are reciprocal. Harley has a hair up his ass for Paul, as the young man, although not always responsible for the towns trouble is always there or thereabouts. While on patrol one night Harley encounters Pam Reddick and this meeting sets off a chain of events that threatens all their futures.
This is a brilliant debut novel which revolves around the goings on in a small Nebraskan county, where crimes and incidents of the past still impact on the lives of the inhabitants and where old grudges don’t go unforgotten or forgiven. Harley’s mother’s death still haunts him, so much so that he finds it difficult to even enter his old home for fear of the memories that may return. The death of Dell Jnr. has also left an indelible mark on all of the Reddick family despite the years that have passed. The inhabitants that are left within the county are all old and are just barely living out their days but their minds still recall past indiscretions by their neighbours. I initially found the story a bit slow and it took me a little while to get into the rhythm and feel of the prose but the second half of the novel really takes off. I found the ending thoroughly engrossing and honestly had no idea how it was all going to play out, especially with all the main characters having a different conception of what was going on.
Chris Harding Thornton has really set the bar high with this debut and I’m already looking forward to her future publications.
December 31, 2021
If you like James Sallis then this debut novel might be for you. PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS is set in a fictional Nebraska county, but anyone who has spent any time in central or western Nebraska will find the descriptions here familiar. If you actually lived through and were cognizant in the 1970s while traversing the parts of the Cornhusker state that aren't Omaha or Lincoln, this will prove even moreso.
The terrain, the dying towns with sputtering economies, and the likely futures of cast and characters can best be categorized as "bleak". Chris Harding Thornton is deft at descriptions and depictions that capture the bleakness without hitting the reader over the head with direct pronouncements, and that draws you in even when the characters are decidedly unenticing. Some of the scene-setting will stay with me for quite a while; Thornton is that good at staging. There is a climatic ending to this slowly unfolding story, but it suggests more than resolves. You may often shake you head over the traits and actions of the primary characters in this novel, but somehow I'm still interested enough to hope for a sequel.
This is a story
living in the sepia,
just like Dorothy.
The terrain, the dying towns with sputtering economies, and the likely futures of cast and characters can best be categorized as "bleak". Chris Harding Thornton is deft at descriptions and depictions that capture the bleakness without hitting the reader over the head with direct pronouncements, and that draws you in even when the characters are decidedly unenticing. Some of the scene-setting will stay with me for quite a while; Thornton is that good at staging. There is a climatic ending to this slowly unfolding story, but it suggests more than resolves. You may often shake you head over the traits and actions of the primary characters in this novel, but somehow I'm still interested enough to hope for a sequel.
This is a story
living in the sepia,
just like Dorothy.
January 22, 2021
This book was recommended by a former neighbor from my childhood who is also listed in the author’s acknowledgments. (Hi Janice!) I give this book a solid 4 stars. Great story development and the effects of trauma were clearly captured. However, some of the writing felt forced, like for a class or for a professor’s sake. That made it bulky and a bit tiresome at times. But the plot was engrossing and well developed. Having a map of the area would have enhanced the experience a great deal as well!
March 1, 2021
There is a lot of good writing contained in this debut by the author. This is some rural Noir with lots of mood and atmosphere and characters moving through the dead of night chasing arsonists, criminals, ghosts and the past.
I'll definitely keep an eye out for what Chris Harding Thornton writes next and hopefully it will have a little more story as that was the only thing lacking from this, and keeping it from being 4 stars or higher. so 3 + stars for this debut with some great writing and characters just not enough story for me.
I'll definitely keep an eye out for what Chris Harding Thornton writes next and hopefully it will have a little more story as that was the only thing lacking from this, and keeping it from being 4 stars or higher. so 3 + stars for this debut with some great writing and characters just not enough story for me.
April 2, 2021
A hell of a debut! There's a southern saying "The chickens have come home to roost" and I think it's a fitting adage to describe this novel. Thornton is a master at character development, mood, and setting. The novel takes place in Nebraska, but strongly resembles my beloved Appalachian novels which so skillfully use place as a character. As an author she trust the reader by brilliantly and slowly setting the tension without "showing". I'm eagerly anticipating future work from Thornton, but it sure will be difficult to match the brilliance of Pickard County Atlas.
May 27, 2021
There were times that I had to put the book down as I was afraid of what was coming next. This is a remarkable first novel. Characters include Pam, Rick, Paul, Harley, Babe and Anna. They live in and around Madson which is located in Nebraska’s Sandhills. There is not much happening in the painfully hot weather.
These folks have seen more violence and sadness then anyone should have to bear. Their family history deeply influences their life today. There is an unanticipated ending to their story. I highly recommend this book.
These folks have seen more violence and sadness then anyone should have to bear. Their family history deeply influences their life today. There is an unanticipated ending to their story. I highly recommend this book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 196 reviews