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Undone Valley
Twenty years after his father is murdered outside a rundown motel near their ruined Ohio mill town, college dropout Dalton Hartwell leads a quiet life of denial and repressed rage. He spends his days working as an on-call maintenance man for an apartment complex, where he lives and cares for his dying mother. But when a letter arrives one day, notifying him that Andrew Lareaux, the man who killed his father when he was just a boy, has been paroled from prison, it sets Dalton on an obsessive, uncertain journey in pursuit of the truth surrounding the tragic event.
Meanwhile, as Lareaux prepares for his release and tries to mend his fractured relationship with his estranged daughter, Ellie, he finds himself bound by blood to a vicious criminal organization, who plans to collect on his debt in unforeseen ways.
As the lives of these three characters converge and become entangled, a current of deception and despair pull them toward a violent confrontation, from which their only hope of escape is to join together in a desperate fight for survival.
Set amidst the blight and devastation of the American Rust Belt, Undone Valley is a grim, gritty novel about the secrets of the past, how they shape and direct the course of our lives, and the brutal truths that are better left buried.
Meanwhile, as Lareaux prepares for his release and tries to mend his fractured relationship with his estranged daughter, Ellie, he finds himself bound by blood to a vicious criminal organization, who plans to collect on his debt in unforeseen ways.
As the lives of these three characters converge and become entangled, a current of deception and despair pull them toward a violent confrontation, from which their only hope of escape is to join together in a desperate fight for survival.
Set amidst the blight and devastation of the American Rust Belt, Undone Valley is a grim, gritty novel about the secrets of the past, how they shape and direct the course of our lives, and the brutal truths that are better left buried.
353 pages, Paperback
Published September 7, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 11, 2021
Accomplished short-story authors who try to stretch themselves out into novelists often come up short because they’re trying to stretch out short stories into novels. When that happens, it’s because they don’t realize that short stories aren’t novels at scale, and as a result, they wind up stretching one thing out too far at the expense of something else: they double down on plot, or interiority, or setting, or backstory, or load up on character profiles. They don’t realize that novels have three acts, and unless they’re very lucky or at the very top of the talent pyramid, that the three-act structure must be served if they’re to be successful.
When I picked UNDONE VALLEY, William R. Soldan’s debut novel from Cowboy Jamboree Press, I worried about this because I’ve been heavily invested in his work as an accomplished — if underpraised and undervalued — writer of short fiction (get thee to a copy of HOUSES BURNING AND OTHER RUINS). But a few dozen pages in, I realize I needn’t have gotten myself wound up: UNDONE VALLEY is not just a great story, but a great novel, with near-perfect novelistic structure: precision-interlocking plot parts moving smoothly and sonorously on a steadily paced conveyer belt of character and cinematic place, powered by a perfect economy of characters, amid a perpetual hum of pleasurable uncertainty. As a novel of unimpeachable plausibility, it works every bit as well as the slickest high-concept commercial product pumped out by the big New York publishing houses, and why this novel didn’t land the agent that would result in this kind of treatment is a matter of suspense as absorbing as any in its pages, given the current spotlight on great grit-lit, from MARE OF EASTTOWN on television to novels like S.A. Cosby’s RAZORBLADE TEARS and Chris Offutt’s COUNTRY DARK, among many others.
The setting is Rust Belt Ohio, and the characters, each shaped by distant but daily tragedy, are all hanging on by the fingernails of their fingernails. Andrew Lareaux is getting out of prison after twenty years only to find himself in perpetual debt to the white supremacists who made sure he got out alive. Dalton Hartwell is the lost-at-sea son of the man Lareaux killed. Ellie is his daughter; Jeremy her son. Dalton decided his way out of his drift to is to destroy Lareaux; but then he meets Ellie, and Jeremy, and, the more he sees the more he likes, and … well, he’s got a dilemma, doesn’t he? Meanwhile, Lareaux’s hardcore handlers have murderous chores in mind for him; the only problem being, like most murderers, Lareaux had just the one in him, and spent a lot of time behind bars trying hard to not have any others on his conscience, and … well, he’s got a dilemma, doesn’t he?
In its structure, there’s nothing stunningly original here. You know there’s going to be some Grand Guignol violence in the final chapters, but of course the suspense is in the particulars: who lives and who dies, and why. But Soldan’s heart is in the world each character has created for themselves, and the solutions are particularly driven by character: who can handle themselves, and how they came to be people who can handle themselves. There are no gods in the machine, despite the use of a few crime-fiction clichés like the well-placed piece of jagged glass and the gunshot wound to the shoulder. (Too, you may find it a tad too convenient that not only are Dalton and Ellie available, but that they’re instantly attracted to one another, and neither puts up much of a fight against it.) You close the book feeling satisfied that every character has earned their outcome, that the author hasn’t unduly intruded to make it so, and isn’t that really all that matters?
Part of the particular genius of UNDONE VALLEY is that while its prose is never showy or ponderous, it does take its time in a way we find we don’t mind. For the reader, time in prison (on the page, anyway) is never time wasted, and the bars and diners and back roads and ramshackle buildings of a land that time is on its way to forgetting are equally exquisite company. As are the moody blues plucking minor chords inside the heads of every character, all rendered with a minimum of fuss and maximum of articulate rumination. (An example: “As Fleetwood Mac became Supertramp became Bob Seger, Dalton worked his way through two rum and Cokes and thought about the story his mother told him the night his father was shot.”)
I won’t damn UNDONE VALLEY with faint praise by calling it a “promising debut.” Its promise is already fulfilled, fully. This is a big-league crime novel … and, frankly, just a big-time novel. It is one of the very best to come out of 2021, the kind of novel you’ll reread in 2022 and beyond, and the agents and publishers who overlook William R. Soldan’s big-league talent do so with seriously blinkered judgment. This is a Taylor Sheridan or Thomas Bezucha film waiting to be made on a greased slide of abundant foreign-rights sales. William R. Soldan, plain and simple, has got the shit.
When I picked UNDONE VALLEY, William R. Soldan’s debut novel from Cowboy Jamboree Press, I worried about this because I’ve been heavily invested in his work as an accomplished — if underpraised and undervalued — writer of short fiction (get thee to a copy of HOUSES BURNING AND OTHER RUINS). But a few dozen pages in, I realize I needn’t have gotten myself wound up: UNDONE VALLEY is not just a great story, but a great novel, with near-perfect novelistic structure: precision-interlocking plot parts moving smoothly and sonorously on a steadily paced conveyer belt of character and cinematic place, powered by a perfect economy of characters, amid a perpetual hum of pleasurable uncertainty. As a novel of unimpeachable plausibility, it works every bit as well as the slickest high-concept commercial product pumped out by the big New York publishing houses, and why this novel didn’t land the agent that would result in this kind of treatment is a matter of suspense as absorbing as any in its pages, given the current spotlight on great grit-lit, from MARE OF EASTTOWN on television to novels like S.A. Cosby’s RAZORBLADE TEARS and Chris Offutt’s COUNTRY DARK, among many others.
The setting is Rust Belt Ohio, and the characters, each shaped by distant but daily tragedy, are all hanging on by the fingernails of their fingernails. Andrew Lareaux is getting out of prison after twenty years only to find himself in perpetual debt to the white supremacists who made sure he got out alive. Dalton Hartwell is the lost-at-sea son of the man Lareaux killed. Ellie is his daughter; Jeremy her son. Dalton decided his way out of his drift to is to destroy Lareaux; but then he meets Ellie, and Jeremy, and, the more he sees the more he likes, and … well, he’s got a dilemma, doesn’t he? Meanwhile, Lareaux’s hardcore handlers have murderous chores in mind for him; the only problem being, like most murderers, Lareaux had just the one in him, and spent a lot of time behind bars trying hard to not have any others on his conscience, and … well, he’s got a dilemma, doesn’t he?
In its structure, there’s nothing stunningly original here. You know there’s going to be some Grand Guignol violence in the final chapters, but of course the suspense is in the particulars: who lives and who dies, and why. But Soldan’s heart is in the world each character has created for themselves, and the solutions are particularly driven by character: who can handle themselves, and how they came to be people who can handle themselves. There are no gods in the machine, despite the use of a few crime-fiction clichés like the well-placed piece of jagged glass and the gunshot wound to the shoulder. (Too, you may find it a tad too convenient that not only are Dalton and Ellie available, but that they’re instantly attracted to one another, and neither puts up much of a fight against it.) You close the book feeling satisfied that every character has earned their outcome, that the author hasn’t unduly intruded to make it so, and isn’t that really all that matters?
Part of the particular genius of UNDONE VALLEY is that while its prose is never showy or ponderous, it does take its time in a way we find we don’t mind. For the reader, time in prison (on the page, anyway) is never time wasted, and the bars and diners and back roads and ramshackle buildings of a land that time is on its way to forgetting are equally exquisite company. As are the moody blues plucking minor chords inside the heads of every character, all rendered with a minimum of fuss and maximum of articulate rumination. (An example: “As Fleetwood Mac became Supertramp became Bob Seger, Dalton worked his way through two rum and Cokes and thought about the story his mother told him the night his father was shot.”)
I won’t damn UNDONE VALLEY with faint praise by calling it a “promising debut.” Its promise is already fulfilled, fully. This is a big-league crime novel … and, frankly, just a big-time novel. It is one of the very best to come out of 2021, the kind of novel you’ll reread in 2022 and beyond, and the agents and publishers who overlook William R. Soldan’s big-league talent do so with seriously blinkered judgment. This is a Taylor Sheridan or Thomas Bezucha film waiting to be made on a greased slide of abundant foreign-rights sales. William R. Soldan, plain and simple, has got the shit.
March 31, 2022
There's not much I can say that the great Jim Thomsen hasn't said in his review of the novel, but I picked this one up with much excitement and it did not disappoint. It's a classic character driven crime novel that I found was best digested in large chunks, which are sometimes hard to come by in my house. This book marked the first couple of days warm enough to read sitting in the garden and I couldn't have asked for a better companion.
In 1983, Dalton's father is murdered in a bar parking lot by Lareaux for reasons unknown. Dalton's father was running from something, but Dalton never really knew what. Fast forward to 2003 and Dalton and his mom have made their lives in Wisconsin, Lareaux is on the brink of parole and Lareaux's daughter Ellie is struggling to make ends meet.
Soldan is an excellent short fiction writer and poet and he makes the transition to writing a novel seamlessly with a book that is not afraid to take its time and immerse us in the lives of its characters. With most books of this kind, you might find the first hundred or so pages consigned to a few paragraphs, but Soldan succeeds in making these worthwhile as his story holds emotional heft.
In some regards the plot is predictable, but Soldan performs the trick of quickly dispensing with some of these derivatives in order to progress things into more unstable territory or simply to keep the reader on their toes.
This feels like the type of book you rarely see anymore and speaks to the pull between commerce and art as Soldan takes the time to delve into his characters and their situations become more than simple plot devices because of it. There is nothing flashy on show within this novel other than the hard work of making such craft look simple.
In 1983, Dalton's father is murdered in a bar parking lot by Lareaux for reasons unknown. Dalton's father was running from something, but Dalton never really knew what. Fast forward to 2003 and Dalton and his mom have made their lives in Wisconsin, Lareaux is on the brink of parole and Lareaux's daughter Ellie is struggling to make ends meet.
Soldan is an excellent short fiction writer and poet and he makes the transition to writing a novel seamlessly with a book that is not afraid to take its time and immerse us in the lives of its characters. With most books of this kind, you might find the first hundred or so pages consigned to a few paragraphs, but Soldan succeeds in making these worthwhile as his story holds emotional heft.
In some regards the plot is predictable, but Soldan performs the trick of quickly dispensing with some of these derivatives in order to progress things into more unstable territory or simply to keep the reader on their toes.
This feels like the type of book you rarely see anymore and speaks to the pull between commerce and art as Soldan takes the time to delve into his characters and their situations become more than simple plot devices because of it. There is nothing flashy on show within this novel other than the hard work of making such craft look simple.
February 25, 2022
This is beyond brilliant. Get your copy now.
November 11, 2021
I thoroughly enjoyed William Soldan’s short story collection HOUSES BURNING earlier this year, so I was very eager to read his first novel. And he did not disappoint.
At the center of all the grime and grit, there is a very human story centering on the fractured lives of Dalton Hartwell, whose father was gunned down when he was just a boy; Andrew Lareaux, the man who shot Dalton’s father newly released from prison and in debt to some Neo-Nazis; and Lareaux’s daughter Ellie, who struggles to live in a desolate city raising her son all alone. The paths converge when Dalton loses his mother and wants closure and possibly violent retribution from Lareaux. What follows is an examination of grief, redemption, and hope in a pocket of American in which there is nothing left.
Soldan has such a strong sense of place throughout the novel, too. The desolate, rundown urban Ohio reflects the inner turmoil of his characters so well. I felt like I was walking the cracked pavements alongside the abandoned factories. He writes Ohio as well as Donald Ray Pollack. Incredible.
I love a good grit lit story - and Soldan delivered.
At the center of all the grime and grit, there is a very human story centering on the fractured lives of Dalton Hartwell, whose father was gunned down when he was just a boy; Andrew Lareaux, the man who shot Dalton’s father newly released from prison and in debt to some Neo-Nazis; and Lareaux’s daughter Ellie, who struggles to live in a desolate city raising her son all alone. The paths converge when Dalton loses his mother and wants closure and possibly violent retribution from Lareaux. What follows is an examination of grief, redemption, and hope in a pocket of American in which there is nothing left.
Soldan has such a strong sense of place throughout the novel, too. The desolate, rundown urban Ohio reflects the inner turmoil of his characters so well. I felt like I was walking the cracked pavements alongside the abandoned factories. He writes Ohio as well as Donald Ray Pollack. Incredible.
I love a good grit lit story - and Soldan delivered.
August 13, 2025
As well as being a brilliant down-and-dirty crime story about secrets, murder and retribution, Undone Valley is also a haunting and heart-breaking novel about loss, grief, regret and reconciliation.
Like the best noirs, the characters are real people, with real lives, everyday struggles and long-forgotten dreams. And also like the best noirs, there's a relentless inevitability to the story as it builds to its violent and tragic climax.
Mr Soldan writes with sincerity, heart and brutal poetry. There's blood and sorrow in these pages, but hope and healing, too.
Like the best noirs, the characters are real people, with real lives, everyday struggles and long-forgotten dreams. And also like the best noirs, there's a relentless inevitability to the story as it builds to its violent and tragic climax.
Mr Soldan writes with sincerity, heart and brutal poetry. There's blood and sorrow in these pages, but hope and healing, too.
January 13, 2022
It’s pretty common with books like this to say it reminds you of certain writers, like this reminds me of Cormac McCarthy and No Country or All the Pretty horses or Woodrell and Winter’s Bone or Give Us a Kiss, but this book doesn’t just remind me of those, it surpasses those in the big categories, plot and character and style. It’s just a fucking great book.
April 19, 2022
Mr. Soldan wrote an excellent novel of crime, trauma, and finding peace and with the scars life gives us. From page one to the end, this is a fantastic read with a cast of characters that feel real and places you can reach out and touch. A must read.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews