Our Burden's Light

by Patrick Thomas Casey

Fall, in its first weeks, scatters its footprints through the Shenandoah Valley---mist and color, shadow and cold---sparsely at first, and then with greater fury. As Our Burden’s Light opens, two families are caught on either side of a moment of small-town violence; subsequently fighting desperately to find their separate ways out of its grasp. One family combusts under the weight of loss, while the other is quietly buried by it.

Debut novelist Patrick Thomas Casey reimagines the Edenic story of being cast out of paradise, using the lens of contemporary America and the poignant stories of three people knotted together. Our Burden’s Light traces the arcs of innocence and its loss, memory and love, home and its inevitable vanishing, which turn through Casey’s beautifully-rendered characters’ fracturing lives, in a chorus of voices moving ever farther away from the valley they once shared. This is a powerful entrée by a talented new voice in literary fiction.

Genres: Fiction

336 pages, Hardcover

First published April 13, 2010

Reviews

[Melanie]

This novel is a stunner and delivered well beyond J Weil's promise of 'brave and beautiful writing'. I came away shattered & nourished and not at all sure how to reassemble myself.

For those of you who test only the opening lines don't let the philosophical throw-down alienate you. Immediately after you become incredibly present in a micro scene, tightly intimate with the first set of characters and that chapter is like a bloody fist.

The prose and the characters are lyrical, prophetic, eloquent and simply devastating.

Threading through the novel are vignettes on grief and loss all linked to Shenandoah Valley, and for me Shenandoah is a subtle but ever present main character. Casey takes the time to reveal her beauty, implicit is that the bright, sharp, smokey, burnt, golden backdrop is solely theirs to commit their secrets and betrayals.

For me Casey went beyond investigating the themes of grief, loss & desire, he attacked our darkest motivations. Running parallel to this: the celebration of beauty, how we gravitate to it and repel it.

I'll also add that my dog very much approved of the tenderly rendered portrayal of man's best friend throughout the novel, I'm a sucker for it too.

I fervently hope that the book reaches a wider audience and gains the recognition it is due.

[Nick]

My goodreads review mysteriously disappeared, but i found another one:

Sometimes a novel traffics such beauty it feels foolhardy to assign descriptors, analogies, adjectives. It becomes a visceral thing. Sure it evokes a myriad of emotions beneath, but what you’ll also notice is tight and lumpy and hard throats. Red welled eyes. Quickened breath. A disregard to your environment. Time stops or time flies but you can’t discern the difference. Patrick Thomas Casey’s debut Our Burden’s Light is such a novel. The writing is brave and formidable. It is lyrical and poignant. It should go without saying that a debut should not be this good. It is deep insult to aspiring writers and it sets the bar way too high for Casey’s follow up. How often can you say that a book of such magnitude actually does a disservice to the writer?

Our Burden’s Light slowly and mysteriously unfolds the human condition like only a seasoned poet can. The central narrative is the story of two families wracked by tragedy. It’s a classic tale of love and loss and death and redemption and healing but there is nothing contrived in Casey’s writing. His voice is wholly his own and engages the reader from the first word. Its cadence and austerity lulls the reader into the rhythm and lives of these characters. Short vignettes intersperse the main story. They are superbly crafted and offer depth to the setting, the Shenandoah Valley. These vignettes, these different lives and characters from the main story, help paint a rich picture of life in rural Virginia. They are the stories of others dealing with loss, with tragedy. Those that have fled the valley but haven’t, no matter how hard they try, really left. Those that wish to leave but are bound.

It’s a Southern book in the most grounded way possible. Men grab ice out of salad bowls to refill their whiskey glasses. Fathers and sons ruminate on life’s mysteries in rooms incensed with deep leather furniture and bluish cigarette smoke. The whiskey tastes of smoke and deep oak and isn’t drunk for the ‘fast escape but for the slow warmth that it always promised.’ Casey has created something truly magical here. A thing of singular beauty. Read this now and become changed.

[Doug H]

Melanie and Nick said it better than I ever could and I'm way too worn out by what's going on in the world these days to even try.

Melanie:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Nick:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Thanks guys.

[Mackie]

When I come across a new novel, and plan to get into it in a day or two, I will usually read a paragraph or two just to savor a sense of it and to know what awaits me. However, thinking I was only going to peruse Our Burden's Light, a 2010 debut novel by Patrick Thomas Casey, I found myself drawn instantly to the very first sentence, then to the very first paragraph, and then to the very first three chapters -- until I completed it in a day or two rather than getting to it in a day or two. I both did not want to complete reading this novel and also wanted to witness closure on the characters' evolving conflicts. Mysterious, revealing, and poetic is how I will describe Casey's shaping of the English language and of human nature -- not the human condition, but human nature itself -- as he moves his readers through a novel that reads as a collection of short stories and a collection of short stories that reads as a novel. This is a writer that readers could very well regret not keeping up with if they do not start now with Our Burden's Light.

[Jamie]

Because I always play favorites, the story in the middle— Caleb, Summer, Kelly, and the dogs— is fantastic, my favorite. Most are loose vignettes, but there’s the one story of Hayden, Grant, and Evelyn that weaves all the way through. It’s more poetry than prose, vignettes on grief, sex, beauty, death.

One thing worth noting— maybe, maybe not— is how I started out reading this as southern lit, and after the first chapter everything was just jangling all wrong: things were said and done and assumptions were made that would never, ever be said, done, or made. But, I realized the error was mine. This wasn’t supposed to be set in the south. This just had loose (occasionally close, occasionally very loose) ties to Shenandoah. Once I reframed everything in the proper context, the Anyplace context— Suburbia, the Beltway, Manhattan, Metropolis— it didn’t jangle anymore.

“I don’t know, it’s a cultural thing, I suppose,” Ted says in one of the middle stories. I suppose it is, Ted.

And that’s what’s fascinating to me, what can change depending on our context of it, our culture. How there can be two books in one just by a little readjusting of perspectives. So many interesting discussions are to be had there. But, for now, just a big thanks to Melanie for the recommendation!

[Heather Colacurcio]

I read a lot of books and its honestly rare that I am completely blown away by one. I picked this one up at the library on a whim, having heard nothing about it, and it's now one of my favorites. Patrick Thomas Casey just gets the human experience; death, love, sex, are all interconnected here, with people existing and revolving around them. Casey crafts a bold tale interlaced with chapters that function as short stories in and of themselves, painting a portrait of a town where people have more in common than they may think. This is a stunning novel that is beautifully written. Casey's subject matter is tough to swallow, but his prose makes it go down smooth. I have nothing but praise for this one and can't wait to see more from this author.

[Fawn]

I loved the structure of this novel, with thematically or emotionally relevant short stories interspersed with varied perspectives on the primary narrative. Casey creates both beautiful and devastating imagery through his words.

[Ruthie]

Still not sure how I feel about this book. The ending was horrifying.

Thought about it more. I will add my review later.

[Jeanne]

well-reviewed as a bright new writer. (Christina's recommend)