In This Ground
by Beth Castrodale
B&N / B-A-M
Publisher: Garland Press (September 18, 2018)
Just as his indie-rock band was poised to make it big, Ben Dirjery traded it all in for fatherhood and the stability of a job at Bolster Hill Cemetery. Now closing in on fifty, the former guitarist finds himself divorced and at loose ends, and still haunted by the tragic death of his former band’s lead singer, who is buried, literally, under Ben’s feet. Then Ben’s daughter begins questioning a past he has tried to bury. If he can face her questions, he might finally put to rest his guilt over his bandmate’s death, and bring music back into his life.
“Startlingly incongruous parts–graveyards, guitars, and mushrooms–come together in satisfying and unexpected ways. Sharp writing and an unconventional plot make for a darkly enjoyable read.”–Kirkus Reviews
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
Cole tried to picture Ms. Gale drinking in a cemetery and didn’t
come close. Though she looked younger than any other teacher in the school it
was impossible to imagine her at seventeen—at least not the loud, stupid kind
of seventeen. Her type of serious seemed elemental, the type you had from
birth.
Nature will have her way with all of us, son, no matter what
tricks we try to pull. If you want someone to stay the same forever you better
take a picture.
This is one of the quirkiest, smartly written, and multi-layered tales I have ever read; I enjoyed it immensely. I wasn’t always in full comprehension of what was transpiring or where the story was taking me, but I certainly delighted in the unpredictability and capriciousness of this wily author’s route. The characters were an odd assortment of unconventional and unorthodox, and I was incurably curious about each and every one of them. Even the secondary characters were tantalizingly complex and thoughtfully constructed with peculiar foibles and compelling irregularities.
At the heart of the story was an existential and analytical gravedigger who had been an up and coming and talented musician in his youth, but had denied himself the pleasure of his first love of music for over twenty years. Mix in family dramas, yarn bombing, mushroom hunting, art, covert cemetery gatherings, green burials and environmental concerns, cemetery maintenance, and prickly small-town bureaucrats; and I was amazed at the author’s agile artistry in creatively weaving all these wildly diverse threads together. This is one of those unusual tales where the extraordinary characters will periodically revisit and inhabit my cranium for quite some time.
Empress DJ
Beth Castrodale has worked as a newspaper reporter and editor. Her novels include Marion Hatley, a finalist for a Nilsen Prize for a First Novel from Southeast Missouri State University Press (published by Garland Press in 2017), and In This Ground (Garland Press, 2018). Beth’s stories have appeared in such journals as Printer’s Devil Review, The Writing Disorder, and the Mulberry Fork Review.
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