The wonderful thing about books (one of the hundreds of thousands of wonderful things about books) is the surprise offered when an unknown book is opened and a great story comes out. I was given Kyle Jarrard's novel, Rolling the Bones, as a present from the author, a kind of thank-you to me for inspiring reading through my year of reading one book a day and writing about it on www.readallday.org. He sent me the book in early January and I placed it on a pile of books I'd promised to read. I picked it up yesterday, sat down to read, and I did not get up for hours. In one day of voracious reading, I read Rolling the Bones and I loved it.
Rolling the Bones is a fabulous adventure book, a soul-searcher, a dream-catcher, and a long, luscious roll in the hay, accompanied by great characters, whopping lies, spiraling plot, and imagery so full and deep it was as if I were there, a silent participant, for every single minute of it. From North Texas to the Oklahoma Panhandle to southern Mexico to Louisiana and back down to Central Mexico and then ever onwards and up and down, the book is about road trips and mind trips and hearts entwined, torn apart, and found again.
Carl Blalock and his wife Venus welcome traveling man Carl Stein and his beautiful wife May into their town, their hardware store, their house, and their hearts. On a day's lazy trip to the far shore of a local lake, tragedy strikes. All the lives of all the players -- those present, those in the past, and those still to appear -- change forever, in ways that are unpredictable, slightly twisted, and completely satisfying.
To "roll the bones" is to gamble, to play a game of chance, to throw the dice and see where luck takes you. The idea of giving up control over the future, disallowing the past to exert control, and giving in to the present is a central theme of the novel. May uses losing control and living in the moment as a mantra to survive -- and even enjoy -- her peripatetic existence, whereas her husband Carl hangs on tightly to control, planning ahead and looking behind in order to be ready for anything and anyone: being in control is a necessary element of his calling, the con of good people. When he starts losing control, he starts losing the con. Carl Blalock and Venus unwillingly lose control of their lives but once it's gone, they go all the way in their unraveling, following the freed lines of fate and luck, and winding up in a place I hoped they would but didn't know they would until the very end.
There are other characters in the novel and every one, from walk-on role to longer-term actor, has a story. Jarrard tells each story with narrative to match the unique tale and identity of the teller. The result is a book of rollicking rhythm and looping plot; Rolling the Bones is never boring, always fascinating, and certain to make your brain turn cartwheels.
The writing itself is lyrical, at times even haunting, with piercingly accurate descriptions of places within the heart and outside the windows of the always-moving car:
"The mighty wind that bore down on the earth and on the ragged people who managed to cling to it, stone-faced folks out there watching her go by. Rust-brown people who neither smiled nor frowned, who sat atop their hunks of machinery and observed her, a woman alone. Lead-eyed people who'd lost a limb, or a child, to an accident, or a wife to disease, people leaning like the telephone poles but held together by all that old wire, all the years of being out in the middle of nowhere."
The characters in Rolling the Bones spend a lot of time driving, lying around hotel rooms and porches, and sitting on deck chairs, staring off into sunsets that deepen into blue then black. Why didn't a single one of these men or women, so thirsty for adventure, ever pick up a book? A book like Rolling the Bones, full of risk and chance, would have satisfied them. Instead, they reach for each other, for strangers, and for mirages of ones they desire, reminding me of a great line from Jim Harrison's The English Major, "The only real adventure in most people's lives is adultery." For the characters in Rolling the Bones, adultery is only one of many adventures, adventures taken on a gamble and played for high stakes: love, life, and happiness.
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