Name: The line that held us
ISBN: 9780399574221

David Joy

When Darl Moody went hunting after a monster buck he's chased for years, he never expected he'd accidentally shoot a man digging ginseng. Worse yet, he's killed a Brewer, a family notorious for vengeance and violence. With nowhere to turn, Darl calls on the help of the only man he knows will answer, his best friend, Calvin Hooper. But when Dwayne Brewer comes looking for his missing brother and stumbles onto a blood trail leading straight back to Darl and Calvin, a nightmare of revenge rips apart their world.

The line that held us

Abbie Duggan

4.5 stars for this - lost half a star for me when I struggled to stomach some of the gruesome scenes. Otherwise, this book is full of some seriously beautiful writing. It’s not a story I would traditionally pick up, but I’m glad I did. At times I felt enraged, often anxious, and genuinely heartbroken for characters I really didn’t even enjoy... I’m impressed with how well I came to equally care for and dislike a lot of these characters.

Ryan LaFerney

It's interesting that while reading The Line That Held Us I thought of Flannery O'Connor's famous story A Good Man is Hard to Fine. Turns out that David Joy wanted to write a book as if William Gay and Flannery O'Connor co-wrote McCarthy's Child Of God. He wanted to create a "bad guy" as memorable as Lester Ballard, The Misfit, or the Paper-Hanger. 

I think in Dwayne Brewer he gets pretty darn close. I'll explain.

Joy’s third novel, “The Line That Held Us,” is another amazing work of Appalachian noir/Southern Gothic storytelling. It begins with Darl Moody, a hunter who sneaks onto a neighbor’s land to poach deer out of season. When he accidentally shoots and kills a ginseng poacher after mistaking him for a boar, Darl calls his best friend, Calvin Hooper, to help dispose of the body.

Unlike Joy’s earlier protagonists, these men aren’t connected to the local meth trade, the source of so much violence in “Where All Light Tends to Go” (2015) and “The Weight of This World” (2017). But Darl and Calvin have another problem: the dead ginseng poacher’s older brother, Dwayne Brewer, is a megalomaniacal villain straight out of a Coen brothers movie. 

What is interesting about Dwayne as an antagonist is he is sort of sympathetic (to a degree - you sympathize with him losing his brother) and he lives by a strict sense of moral codes. He was done wrong and believes those guilty of wronging him should pay. At the same, Dwayne in many ways is the quintessential negative Appalachian stereotype. He is a confederate flag-loving guy. He shops at Wal-Mart. Etc. Throughout the story, Dwayne grows into a very despicable character but he is sympathetic because his actions are driven by his sorrow and love for his brother. Was it weird that I sympathized with his pain? I'm not sure.

To say anything else would be to spoil the suspense of the story. But know that the ending had me on the end of my seat! 

“The Line That Held Us” is a suspenseful page-turner, complete with one of the absolutely killer endings that have become one of Joy’s signatures.

The line that held us

Reviews

Highlights