Eve Malone was a promising high school cross country runner with high hopes. When her mother’s health fails and with her father languishing in jail she finds herself trapped in a run down trailer park in West Virginia. Her mother’s death provides the opportunity to flee to the nearby town of Alexandria. But life on her own is no bed of roses either. Broke and begging on the street, she falls into the arms of an artist named Baker who gradually helps her put the pieces back together. By rekindling her love for running Malone lights a spark that may just fire her up to fulfill her potential.
MALONE RIDGE is a beautifully written example of Southern fiction. The milieu will be familiar to readers of the modern masters of Southern fiction Barry Hannah and Larry Brown and while not quite scaling the heights of their best work, author James K Dill manages to establish his own voice with admirable grit and lyrical flair. His characters are finely honed and his dialogue is naturalistic yet always precise and poetic. The scene setting is superb with the dereliction of the trailer park set amidst the wider beauty of the countryside particularly evocative. There are struggles for sure as Malone has to overcome the obstacles that a difficult background has gifted her and Dill pitches the balance between despondency and determination perfectly, never laying on the misery too thickly to obscure the hopeful chinks of light that still shine through. The use of Malone’s running as a clear metaphor for the way she handles life is never overplayed and Dill seamlessly counterpoints his character’s pure athleticism with her inner emotional turmoil.
MALONE RIDGE is carefully structured and Dill’s pacing is as exact and calculated as an experienced long distance runner. He builds rhythm into his prose, never too showy, and the story arcs step by step, always moving forward, the ending as satisfying as a runner must find the welcoming brush of tape held across a finishing line.
Author James K Dill shows great skill in keeping a perfect balance between despair and hope in MALONE RIDGE, a beautifully structured novel that is gritty and poetic with a heart that beats and pounds like the runner at the center of its story.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader