The secret wisdom of the earth /

THERE'S A SCHOOL of thought that believes the major chords are to be found in the familiar, and the great books are those that most readily suggest the well-known, well-loved classics. "The Secret Wisdom of the Earth," the first novel from Christopher Scotton, brings a handful of favorite novels to mind, suggestive of several without being deeply indebted to any single one. That accounts, at least in part, for the great enthusiasm this novel has generated on its way to publication. The narrator, Kevin, is an adult looking back on the crucial summer when he became a man. After the tragic death of his younger brother, 14-year-old Kevin and his grieving, nearly catatonic mother have come to the Appalachian town of Medgar, Ky., to recover while staying with her father, Pops. Kevin has started setting fires out of anger and guilt over his brother's death. Fortunately, he becomes friends with a hardy mountain boy named Buzzy, who tells him to stop risking the whole damn forest with his little habit and introduces Kevin to mysterious Appalachian culture. The most endearing character in the novel is Pops, a veterinarian and the kind of grandfather you might design to be your own: intelligent, educated and entirely present for his grandson. Kevin assists him out in the hinterlands of the county and witnesses both the good and awful things people do to their animals and those humans closest to them. Medgar doesn't have much variety in the way of industry, but it does have coal mining. The locals have an uneasy relationship with the mines. They need the jobs, but mountaintop removal is such an ugly practice - forever scarring the land and filling the water with carcinogenic toxins. Some residents try to slow the shortening of even more hilltops and refuse to sell land; others see the writing on the wall, sell and move away. The mining company, led by the ruthless Bubba Boyd, wants to buy Pop's hollow, which infuriates Kevin. "How could they even think of destroying this place?" he says. "I just don't get it." "Men like Bubba Boyd think the earth owes them a living," Pops explains. "They take whatever wealth they can from the mountains and move on. I actually feel sorry for him, I really do. He can't for the life of him see the simple beauty in a waterfall or understand the importance of history and place. If I have one hope for you, Kevin, it's that you never become one of those men." The strongest anti-removal advocate in town is Paul Pierce, the closeted gay man who runs the local beauty salon, and is beaten to death in the alley behind his shop. Buzzy knows more than he's saying, but complicated loyalties force him to keep secrets from the sheriff. Eventually, Buzzy turns up at Pops's house, hungry and bruised, without explanation. Pops asks no questions but invites the wounded boy along on the annual trek to remote and pristine Glaston Lake, where they live off the land for several days. Scotton's descriptions of their long hike and of the land's desecration are poignant: "We stood on the edge of a flat, gray moonscape two miles across and dotted with pooling water of a color unknown to the natural order of things - orange, red, purple, bright green. It looked like a rainbow had fallen out of the sky and each hue had gathered into its own pond. . . . From our vantage point 200 feet above it all, we could see across the dead land to the far tree line. From here to there were three long flattop plateaus where Indian Head, Sadler and Cheek mountains had been. Between them, where the company pushed the overburden, were shallow valleys filled up with rock and soil taken from the mountains. . . . And on the middle table, checked by a wide oval berm, was a lake brimming with black coal sludge - not normal black, but a darker, ominous alchemy of black that seemed to have been contrived by the Devil himself." Beyond the defiled land, in the back of Old Blue National Forest, they finally reach unspoiled Lake Glaston, but once there, strange things begin to happen, and the boys somehow sense that they are being watched. THE FIRST HALF of "The Secret Wisdom of the Earth" moves with the leisurely pace of summer, but the second half is a page turner featuring masculine challenges, bloodshed and stoic survival. Some of the challenges Kevin and Buzzy encounter strain credulity, but they edge us toward myth, stretching for something larger than verisimilitude. Scotton's prose is colloquial and evocative; the descriptions are sharp, the voice down-to-earth. But he has a few tics that might grate and is sometimes approximate and muddled in his language - though I suspect readers will get the gist. What he should be congratulated on is his willingness to tell a new story in an old neighborhood, to draw characters who are thoroughly human, and to create a story that leads to terror and redemption, love and survival. The narrator looks back on the crucial summer when he became a man. DANIEL WOODRELL is the author of "Winter's Bone" and, most recently, "The Maid's Version."

Scotton's accomplished debut is the story of Kevin Gillooly, a 14-year-old boy who moves to coal country and learns about courage and violence, beauty and danger, from his wise, weathered grandfather and a best friend well versed in backwoods survival. Kevin's mother brings him to her hometown of Medgar, Ky., after the death of Kevin's three-year-old brother. Kevin's grandfather Pops is a large-animal veterinarian and hires Kevin as an assistant. Pops also introduces him to books like Treasure Island and gives him time off to explore the surrounding mountains with his friend and confidant Buzzy Fink, who teaches Kevin how to use slugs to treat spider bites and other survival skills. Kevin sees land destroyed by mining, hears exploding mountaintops, and feels the fly-rock, while Buzzy witnesses the beating of gay hairdresser and anti-mining activist Paul Pierce. Both Kevin and Buzzy are tested during a camping trip with Pops, when an unknown assailant tracks them down and opens fire in the wilderness. Scotton's cast of classic Appalachian characters also includes housekeeper Audy Rae, Cleo the high school football hero, the violent and inbred Budget family, and an array of old men shooting the breeze at Hivey's. The coming-of-age story is enriched by depictions of the earth's healing and redemptive power. Neither the first portrait of mining country nor the most original, Scotton's novel nonetheless makes for compelling reading when the action grows intense-managing, like the landscape it describes, to be simultaneously frightening and beautiful. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Debut author Scotton sets a captivating modern morality tale in Kentucky's coal country, 1985.With the small-town aura of To Kill a Mockingbird, a man reflects on the summer he learned that tradition, greed, class, race and sexual orientation can make for murder. Multiple stories are at play in the coal town of Medgar: Bubba Boyd, the boorish son of a coal baron, is raping the landscape; local opposition leader and popular hairstylist Paul Pierce's homosexuality is used to attack his environmental position; and the narrator, Kevin, grieving the death of his younger brother, arrives at age 14 to stay with his widowed grandfather. With a mother trapped by depression and father subconsciously casting blame, Kevin's left alone in grief's pit, and it's Pops, a wise and gentle veterinarian, who understands his pain and guilt. In Medgar, mines are played out, and Boyd's Monongahela Energy digs coal by "mountaintop removal," pushing forested peaks into verdant valleys, leaving a poisoned landscape. Scotton's descriptions of plundered peaks like Clinch Mountain, Indian Head and Sadler, Pops' boyhood haunts, are gut-wrenching. As Kevin tags along on vet calls with Pops and befriends a local teen, Buzzy Fink"fresh friends from completely different worlds faced with the hard shapings of truth and deceit"Scotton explores both the proud, stoic hillbilly culture that accepts Paul's "bachelor gentlemen" love and the hate-filled greed wielding the Bible as a weapon in service of ignorance and Mammon. And then Buzzy witnesses a brutal killing, a murder whose ramifications may cost Cleo, his brother, a prestigious college football scholarship. With glimpses of a mythical white stag and mad stones symbolic of the land's capacity to heal, Pop, Buzzy and Kevin "tramp " to an isolated lake and find themselves targeted in a Deliverance-like shooting. Scotton offers literary observation"a storm was filling the trees with bursting light"and a thoughtful appreciation of Appalachia's hard-used people and fragile landscape. A powerful epic of people and place, loss and love, reconciliation and redemption. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.