When These Mountains Burn by David Joy

 

Grabbed this from the library when I saw it, because I'm basically in some kind of love with David Joy's writing, and oh my gawds this is a brutal and beautiful novel. It's at least a little more hopeful than Where All Light Tends to Go, the ending turns almost elegiac, just the last handful of paragraphs as one of the POV characters is pondering the differences between the mountain life he was born into and the mountain life he's going to be leaving behind. Joy writes with belief and empathy and his prose is sweet like blood, his characters make choices they know are bad and they still often aren't prepared for how bad things will get, how heavy the consequences will be for their actions; he never shies away from telling their truths, from showing their pain. His novels are strong stuff, but they're worth it.