by Ray Wallace

November Mourns
By Tom Piccirilli
Bantam Spectra     


I have a short list of writers whose new work I always find myself anxious to read. This would include, in no particular order, Joe Lansdale, Chuck Palahniuk, Edward Lee, China Mieville, and . . .

Tom Piccirilli.

The author of such novels as A Lower Deep, The Night Class, and A Choir of Ill Children always manages to create works that are simultaneously dark, bizarre, often poetic, and always entertaining. A tradition he continues admirably with his latest offering, November Mourns.

At the story's opening, we find the main character, Shad Jenkins, in prison for viciously assaulting a man who attacked his teenage sister, Megan. While there, he is informed that his sister has been found dead. Upon his release, he returns to the mountain town of Moon Run Hollow to try to find out who was responsible for her death. Clues are practically nonexistent. Her body was discovered by the local deputy lying peacefully near a lonely stretch of road that leads up to a gorge at the edge of town where plague victims were once brought to die. The only sign of possible foul play is a slight scratch on her cheek. From all appearances, it would seem as if her heart had simply given out. But Shad isn't buying it. There's something going on here. Someone is responsible. And he will not rest until he finds out who that someone is.

Shad's investigation leads him further and further into his own personal darkness and the town's less-than-proud history. The latter seems to center around the gorge which was host to events remembered by some of the town's elders with fear and shame. Shad also realizes the depths to which many of his friends and neighbors have fallen aided by years of moonshine addiction and inbreeding. Nearly everyone he encounters seems to have their own crosses to bear either of a physical or emotional nature, including his father, who is bowed beneath the weight of his grief. After the earlier loss of two wives and now his only daughter, the elder Jenkins channels his despair into his games of solitary chess and the carving of tombstones.

Shad is warned time and again to abandon his quest, even by the ghost of his dead mother who visits him in the blood dreams that plague him. He is told to stay away from the Gospel Trail Road where Megan's body was discovered as nothing but pain awaits him there. But Shad is a stubborn and driven young man who will not be so easily disuaded. After crossing the gorge and spending an evening with the snake handlers who live on the other side, he begins to discover the truth of these warnings. And even then he will not quit but pushes himself onward and deeper into the darkness awaiting him.

The ending of the book is appropriately enigmatic, leaving the reader to wonder at certain aspects of the story's basic reality. Usually I feel a bit cheated when things are not tied up at the end, when all of the questions raised are not answered, but here it feels right as it is consistent with basic themes established early in the narrative. All in all, November Mourns is an entertaining, thought-provoking read sure to appeal to fans of Mr. Piccirilli's excellent A Choir of Ill Children—another mystery with a slightly supernatural flavor set in a small, southern town where the sins of past generations afflict those living in the present. Highly recommended.