The Risen by Ron Rash is a novel about two brothers, a reminiscence of the summer of 1969 - wistful and haunting. Rash is an award-winning American short story writer and novelist, and his work as a poet is reflected in the stillness of this story.
Eugene is sixteen and his brother Bill five years older that summer they spent the weekends fishing a North Carolina river. One day seventeen year old Jane Mosely arrives and they watch her swim. She has been sent from Daytona Beach after running away to a hippy commune, her parents unable to control her desires for free love, music and drugs - her religious aunt and uncle trying to rein her in. The three spend weekends drinking, fishing and both making love to Jane, who prefers to be called Ligeia. Eugene and Ligeia continue a sexual relationship even after she asks him to steal drugs from their grandfather, the local GP. A stern disciplinarian who controls the town, the boys were brought up under his iron hand. Bill was the golden boy who would excel as a surgeon and Eugene would become a famous writer like his hero Thomas Wolfe.
In the present day, our narrator Eugene reflects on his personal failures, his alcoholism, and the drunken accident that cost him his wife and daughter. He turns to Bill, now a renown surgeon, when the eroded banks of the river crumble after a hard rain, exposing an unidentifiable body wrapped in a tarp amidst the mud. The police are reviewing forensic evidence and call out to the community for information. When Jane did suddenly leave for Florida that summer, Bill swore to Eugene he put her on a bus. They vowed they would never talk about her again.
Flashing back and forth in time, the first half is a remembrance of discovery - Eugene's first drink, his first kiss, his first love with Ligeia. While the unspoken tension and secrets are revealed in the second half of the novel, Eugene begins to piece together the events of his life and the causes for both Bill's unequalled success and his own downfall.
With the calmness of a lake, this is a novel of a past crime, and the damage family members inflict upon those around them. His style is graceful and spare, and in this novel, a mediation on memory.
Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, his bestselling novel Serena was a 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award finalist. I was lucky to find a first edition hardcover, specially bound by the publisher, signed by the author.
2016 / Hardcover / 255 pages
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