THE BLUE LINE DOWN

A rugged debut novel about a young man fleeing from a violent life.

The Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency was a (real-life) vicious, predatory outfit dedicated to stamping out unions at the barrel of a gun. In this captivating debut novel we meet Jude Washer, a lost 24-year-old West Virginian who joined the group for all the wrong reasons (as if there could be right reasons). The year is 1922. Jude’s father had been a mean drunk and coal miner who pushed Jude’s 10-year-old brother to an early death. He was also a union organizer, and Jude, bent on not just destroying his dad but scorching the very earth he stood on, learned to see red when he saw unions. The problem is, Jude also has a soul, even though he tries to drown it with moonshine from his flask, and the Baldwin-Felts, generally speaking, do not. The book has some wonderfully chilling set pieces, including a horrific raid on a mining camp full of workers who are perfectly willing to shoot back. This is where Harvey Morgan, a new recruit Jude is training, decides he’s had enough, and Jude must decide if he’ll continue down his bloodstained path or look for something resembling atonement. This fork in the road is neither broad nor simple; the author tells her story through small actions and stripped-down language, building momentum one page at a time and foregoing big gestures. Her descriptions of the rugged land of the Blue Ridge Mountains ground the action in detail, carved out word by word. You care for Jude, a decent man doing the wrong thing, and when he flees his murderous colleagues with a badly wounded Harvey, you wants a new life for him, even when you know it won’t be easy and there’s a price to pay for past sins. This is rugged writing with a moral compass and a tarnished hero slowly trying to come clean.

Stripped-down language and propulsive storytelling keep these pages turning.