The Last Fair Deal Going Down

by David Rhodes

This novel from the acclaimed author of Driftless is “an arresting work about the salvation of a disintegrating Iowa family” (The New York Times).Survival has been the Sledge way since Reuben Sledge’s father first moved to Des Moines. Yet the family seems cursed, and one by one the Sledges are slipping away. Reuben’s oldest brother is hanged for the murder of his wife. Then another brother is committed to an asylum for spying on the woman he loves. But it’s the rape and disgrace of his beloved sister Nellie that drives Reuben into a deep despair. Into the depths of this depression wanders vulnerable, delightful Tabor, who sets Reuben alive with the promise of her love. When Reuben learns that Tabor has descended into the City, he determines, in a moment of panic, to enter and bring her out. Thus begins the novel’s second act, a harrowing journey through the horrors of the City and among a ghastly assemblage of dwellers who’ve crafted new lives for themselves in the underworld.“David Rhodes proves that there is still vigorous life in the dark Gothic roots of great American novels.” —The Tennessean

Genres: Fiction

298 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 19, 2010

About the author

As a young man, David Rhodes worked in fields, hospitals, and factories across Iowa. After receiving an MFA in Writing from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1971, he published three acclaimed novels: The Last Fair Deal Going Down (1972), The Easter House (1974), and Rock Island Line (1975). In 1976, a motorcycle accident left him partially paralyzed. In 2008, Rhodes returned to the literary scene with Driftless, a novel that was hailed as "the best work of fiction to come out of the Midwest in many years" (Alan Cheuse). Following the publication of Driftless, Rhodes was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010, to support the writing of Jewelweed, his newest novel. He lives with his wife, Edna, in Wisconsin.

“Rhodes proves that there is still vigorous life in the dark Gothic roots of great American novels.”

—Peter W. Jordan, The Tennessean

Reviews

[karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book probably just entered my life at the wrong time.

i had high hopes and good intentions and all those things that invariably end in successful partnerships with books (does sarcasm read on the internet?)

after finally reading my first maureen mchugh book last week, despite owning three of her books for years and years, i thought to myself, "what other gems do i have lying around here - what other authors do keep buying without ever having read?" it came down to david adams richards and this guy. i should have gone with the richards.

i really think if i had had more time to devote to this book, if my reading hadn't gotten broken up into such jagged stolen moments, my experience would have been better. tom fuller likes this guy, and tom fuller knows his shit. but i know for a fact he would not have liked this one.

it is a 22-year-old's debut novel, and it reads exactly like what it is. you can feel the boundless youthful energy of it, but you can also see where its wings are still wet.

it is convoluted and surreal, which i ordinarily like, but i just felt it was muddled in a way that made it difficult to enjoy. some of it may have been my pressed-for-time start-and-stop reading of it - it took me three days to read. THREE DAYS!! unacceptable. but this may have made me miss connections and echoes, which led to my overall negative reading experience.

basically, it chronicles some horrible things that happen to a family living in des moines. rape and dares-gone-wrong, and institutionalization and tractor accidents and amnesia. oh, and also - in this version of des moines, there is a subterranean city complete with giant stone monuments and fog and creepiness, which many have entered, but none have returned.

so on the premise alone, it sounds exactly like the kind of shit i like. but it meandered and blurrily contradicted itself in places, and the overall surreality of it lacked finesse. within the parameters of the surreal, a writer has a lot of leeway, but sometimes this book read as though the surreal was just covering up for a lack of authorial direction.

i am definitely going to read the other books of his i have lying around here - this has not turned me off of him. i can see that he has a lot of potential here, and i can accept that this was just not the right book for me at this time. his ideas are solid, and i am looking forward to reading a more mature work.

come to my blog!

[John Isaacs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since I first encountered this book in a K-Mart remainder bin in 1972 it has been one of my all time favorite novels and I have read it at least five times. I can certainly understand why some people react negatively to its bizarre plot and characters, but if you are interested in a dark journey, sans witches and wizards and modern fantasy foolishness, I think it is a worthwhile read. The story centers around Des Moines where Luther Sledge has brought his bride after leaving Wisconsin. He left after his brothers locked him in a log cabin prison for three years, bringing him food water and laundry once a week. His bride hears his wild animal cry in the woods and visits him through a slit in the logs and surreptitiously brings him whiskey, all the while wondering whether she is prolonging his agony by making it more bearable. When he finally agrees to leave, his brothers give him a wagon, a horse, a dog and fifty dollars. He brides to her house and off they go to Iowa. We never meet her since she dies in childbirth as our narrator is born, the same day his oldest brother is hanged for murder in St.Louis. We learn all about the murder, the house they buy next to the gates to the underground City of Des Moines,,which no one ever talks about and no one ever escapes. If any of this sounds intriguing to you, and I can certainly understand why it would not, I urge you to read this book, now thankfully re-issued in trade paperback so I don't have to lend out my precious first edition.

[Jonathan Fretheim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very different in style from both Driftless and Rock Island Line. This was Rhodes' first published novel, and I think it helps me to think of this as the writing of a young man, fresh from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Rhodes is very in control of his language and some later sections of the book are disorienting, difficult, but worth the effort. The novel is the story of a family, but it is also a way of explaining a worldview, a theory.

"The City" here--is it the dark side of any agrarian society? Is it the things that happen when few individuals are concerned with the mechanics of food production?

The multi-generational demise of the Sledge family is terrible. Unspeakable things happen to this family. Are those trials simply placeholders for the evils of The City? The fact that an ancestor's wife wouldn't step inside a cabin? The son who tried to burn down the mill and was locked up until he agreed to leave Wisconsin? Is the Sledge family a symbol of resistance against the inequity and greed that are necessary, inevitable parts of a modern society? --the current Sledge crop bearing punishment for that resistance? I'd like to read this again in the future to see what I come up with.

[Hundeschlitten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Captivating, depressing as hell, often quite brilliant. A real wham-bang-doodle of a novel, very 1970's in its experimentation and moments of indulgence. Imagine if William S. Burroughs actually wrote about the Midwest were he was born and lived much of his life rather than about the hipster world of the Beats, and you have an idea where this is heading. Be warned: It is a junkie's novel. It took me about about 200 pages to realize this, after the narrator enters the bowels of the City and begins shooting up. But it is filled with the graphic morbidity of a junkie's dreams from page one. So when Reuben gets trapped in this underground alternative city and realizes the folks there survive on cannibalism, know that is not the lowest rung of Rhodes' Inferno, but just another level on the way down. The first 175 pages of the novel are also pretty depressing, but invigorating and at least somewhat realistic. But be warned before taking that last dive down into the City. In the end, I was rewarded by a harrowing vision of my Midwestern world, one defined in large part by the landscape of the American farmer, where "everything that wasn't monetarily negotiable was called a weed and exterminated." In Rhodes' vision, we all pay a psychic price for this, which he lays out in gritty, grimy, shameful detail.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

I honestly cannot figure out whether I liked this book or not. It's thoroughly, thoroughly weird, and is about six parts early John Irving family drama (think The Hotel New Hampshire, maybe), and four parts just plain bizarre and unsettling.

It's set in a fictionalized Des Moines, Iowa, which is pretty much like any Midwestern city, except that there is a huge pit in the center surrounded by a wall. The wall is marked with huge, ominous statues. Sometimes the statues open in order to let someone into the pit, but they never open to let anyone out.

The pit squats like a confusing toad in the center of the town for most of the narrative. It is occasionally referred to, and characters occasionally disappear into it (always signaled by the sound of the stones settling back into the ground), but aggravatingly it is not until the final third of the book that the protagonist ends up there. The horror within is fascinating and terrible, and Rhodes' descriptions are masterful.

Overall, though, I finished this novel and found myself wondering what, exactly, was the point, and what kind of novel was Rhodes attempting to write? It's fascinating and horrible but ultimately inscrutable.

This book is currently out of print. I do hope that it is reprinted, since Rhodes came out with a new novel last year; I don't think it deserves to languish in utter obscurity. Plus, I kind of wish someone would read it and explain it to me.

[West Hartford Public Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

My admiration of the works of David Rhodes continues. This is Rhodes' first novel and while it is darker and more complex than Driftless - (my all-time favorite), it's a provocative story about the redemptive power of love. Rhodes is a beautiful writer - his work is not to be missed.

[Gregg Sapp · Rating 3 out of 5]

There may not be a more unlikely location in America for the setting of a quasi-metaphysical allegorical novel than Des Moines, Iowa. There, in the aorta of America’s heartland, folks grow corn, get up early, eat beef for dinner, go to church on Sundays, and are not generally known for their hypnagogic flights of fantasy. Cow tipping is about as animated at things get.

Nevertheless, in his first novel “The Last Fair Deal Going Down,” David Rhodes envisages a bizarro Des Moines where its normal surface is just a veneer overlaying a very surreal subterranean dreamworld.

Rueben Sledge, the book’s protagonist, begins by telling readers that he must write his story in order to survive. The connection between the digressive narrative and Rueben’s survival remains unclear throughout. The book’s first five chapters, encompassing a little over half of its length, provides an unvarnished Sledge family history that involves stalking, rape, and murder. By the standards of his siblings, Rueben, although admittedly stupid, has lived a charmed existence. He even manages to fall in love with Tabor, a comely but unstable woman, who is weeping when he meets her.

To this point in the book, the tales of Rueben, his family, and their self-afflicted misfortunes reads like a picaresque satire, sad and bawdy, but too over the top to be taken literally. When Tabor descends in to the netherworld and Rueben goes to fetch her, though, the wheels come off the bus completely. What is this place:

“There is a city here… Not a city like Des Moines itself, but an inner city of Des Moines, a lower City. It is at the bottom of this gigantic hole in the ground. At the base – the beginning of the city – is a ghastly stone concrete wall surrounding the city, looming some twenty feet in the air…”

As soon as Reuben enters the lower city, getting out becomes his sole purpose, even though he is assured by each of the peculiar denizens of the deep that escape is impossible. The remaining third of the book consists of Rueben’s encounters with peculiar and fantastic bottom-dwellers inhabiting this phantasmagoric urban gulag. If there are allegories to be mined from this head trip – and I’m sure there are, somewhere – they are buried in the sheer absurdity of it all.

Ultimately, after Rueben has found his way back to the sunlit Iowa terra firma, he gives a clue as to meanings where he writes:

"Whatever happens next will have to come here. It will of course; but it will have passed through many more places before it reaches Des Moines – though no one will believe that it is really happening… and then how long will it take to stretch out and devour the small towns."

Does the ulterior Iowa represent the despoilment of midwestern values and ways of life by industrialized farming? That’s my best guess. But I nevertheless feel that this book is better appreciated for its wit and whimsy, and the suspicion that it all means something deeper is just a distraction.

[Amy Haack · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished reading The Last Fair Deal Going Down. Now that I have read this book I can boast the fact that I have read all of David Rhode's novels. Yet in a very unplanned way I have actually read all of these gems in reverse order of publication. I started with Jewelweed, then Driftless, on to Rock Island Line (my absolute favorite), to Easter House, and just ended with Deal. This one though is perplexing. Is his theme human empathy and compassion? Is it the perils of the farming industry? Is it God and religion? Is it drugs and alcohol? Is it tractors (the man likes to write about tractors)? What the heck is David Rhodes trying to tell us with this one? Or is it just a young David Rhodes with much to say, but unsure of how to join it all together?

Truth is, I love this guy although I've never met him. His writing and his life's story resonate with me. He writes about my thoughts before I even think them. I truly believe Rock Island Line is one of the best pieces of modern literature I have been fortunate enough to read. If you are a David Rhode's fan, don't pass this one by. Don't make it your first read of his, but after you have read his other work let some time go by and read this one. And then you can explain it to me. LOL

Spoiler alert: The well story at the end of the book - what the heck? - was it the rebirth of his mother of which he let fall back down into the pit?

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is underrated. Many excellent passages throughout that bespeak a writer who is more than simply clever, but also in touch with something "more." Other reviewers have mentioned David Lynch as a touchpoint, which I never thought about but isn't that far off, actually, in the treatment of the unconscious; the touchstones that I thought of were Michael Lesy's excavation of early mid-west photographic history in Wisconsin Death Trip and, of course, Harry Smith's anthology of American Folk Music. Like those works, this book is concerned with the degradation of memory, with collage, and with counter-narratives of the midwest (Iowa, in this case). One reason this book is underrated is no doubt its central conceit: there is an underground city, The City, beneath Des Moines. This is the sort of conceit that has become a mere crutch in contemporary American literature and in lesser hands - paging Jonathan Lethem - this would become a dumping ground for ill-thought out metaphor. Yet Rhodes treats this material very well, with a light touch. Not without it's flaws - flaws that are excusable in first novels by 20-somethings - this book is well-worth reading if you are at all curious.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is nothing worse than finishing a book and feeling like your time has been wasted. Though I had high hopes for this book, The Last Fair Deal Going Down is ultimately guilty of this grave offense.

(As a warning, this review contains some spoilers, although in my opinion they are fairly minor, vague, and unsurprising ones.)

The Last Fair Deal Going Down is the story of the hardscrabble Sledge clan of Des Moines, Iowa. It is written as a first-person narration by Reuben Sledge, the youngest of the family's several children, ostensibly the text of a book-within-a-book which Reuben composes for his sister Nellie. Through one externally-imposed misfortune or self-inflicted tragedy after another, the Sledge clan is slowly diminished in number. Their standard means of committing their deceased family members' remains to the earth is to place the body in one of the junk cars which son Paul Sledge spends his time repairing and push the automotive coffin down into the the underworld known as the City - a two-mile wide, miasma-enshrouded portal to which is conveniently located in the back yard of the Sledge family home.

The Last Fair Deal Going Down is thoroughly engrossing, and at times - such as the section depicting Reuben's older brother Will's obsessive stalking of a young woman from whom he rents a room, or Reuben's terrified efforts to stave off autistic memory loss after suffering a head injury in a farming accident - is deeply, disturbingly effecting.

The problem with it is that it never reconciles the seeming incongruity of its premise as part Midwestern human interest hard-luck tale and part surrealist horror fable. While the City is still treated simply as an ominous but inexplicable fact and only occasionally referred to, as it is for perhaps the first two-thirds of the book, it works well enough for the purpose of contributing to the bleak, gray-overcast-above-the-Iowa-plains mood of the book. The problem is that sooner or later, the reader knows that the City is going to take center stage (or, more accurately, become the stage). Sooner or later, the action will shift from the Sledge clan's dysfunctions and misfortunes in the city of Des Moines to the bizarre, hellish, City within the city. The reader spends the entire book waiting for this to occur and wondering how one will connect to the other.

And the fact is that it simply doesn't, not really at all. Perhaps the young David Rhodes, in writing this, his first published work, sensed the problem when he abruptly shifted from first-person to third-person narration at the point where Reuben finally enters the City, with only a marginally convincing in-narrative explanation from Reuben-as-author for the transition. Reuben repeatedly states or thinks that he has been "tricked" into entering the City, and the reader cannot help but share his complaint. The motivation Rhodes gives his protagonist for venturing into the underworld is so flimsy as to seem like an excuse, as though Rhodes was only concerned with the event happening and not in the least with whether the reason for it happening was plausible.

Once inside the City, Reuben has a series of off-puttingly strange experiences, including being forced of necessity to participate in cannibalism, and getting fellated by a girl who may be his long-lost sister. He (and the reader) are treated to a dubiously-credible theory about the origins of the City as a place where the inhabitants are scapegoated to suffer the wrath of God for the Iowa farmers' rapacious cultivation of the land, a bizarre red herring which seems completely disconnected from the rest of the narrative aside from a couple of throwaway paragraphs in the scene-setting of the book's first few pages. This, it should be noted, is the only explanation ever offered for why the City exists, and while it would perhaps have been unrealistic to expect a definitive explanation, this one is perplexing in that it seems like a solitary non sequitur - coming in out of the left cornfield, as it were. We left unsure whether or not Rhodes wants us to actually believe it. Certainly there is nothing offered to make the reader understand how the City and Reuben's experiences in it relate to the rest of the story of the Sledge family's history.

In the end, Reuben manages to exit the supposedly inescapable City - after a couple of failed attempts and some other odd, unexplained, unexplained and seemingly meaningless incidents - essentially by random dumb luck. No lesson learned from his time in the City is hinted at, nor any sort of personal transformation in Reuben's life brought about by his experience. The book ends with a brief epilogue immediately after Reuben's emergence which seems to only confirm that Reuben's entire reason for going into the City in the first place was mistaken and pointless. The book concludes with another non sequitur prophesy, about the crippled, downtrodden, and unfortunate masses of the world someday rising up, with Reuben destined to be saved from the day of judgment only by merit of the narrative he has composed for Nellie.

The reader is left baffled. One sets down the book with the sense that one has been an audience to a not-entirely-successful experiment, the work of a young writer possessed of an intriguing premise and some undeniable talent for depicting human thoughts and motivations, but lacking the motivation to synthesize them into a cohesive, satisfying novel. I will consider reading one of Rhodes' three later novels, such as Rock Island Line, to see how and whether he was able to develop his talent. But, regretfully, I cannot recommend The Last Fair Deal Going Down to anyone unless they are blessed with a good deal of patience and are prepared to accept the novel for what it is: a sometimes-fascinating but ultimately dead-end excursion into a meaningless underworld of human failing and tragedy.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

At its best moments (not infrequent) this story is sometimes a little like Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and at other moments like David Lynch’s unfilmed screenplay Ronnie Rocket. In his first novel, David Rhodes does very well with concocting and extending outlandish scenarios. Regrettably, he either could not end--or simply had no interest in ending--them well. What’s more, a few times he simply pushes the limits of good taste. And this is all to say: there is a tremendous amount of raw imagination here, but unfortunately it remains raw, and this reader needed more.

[Katie Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a fan of David Rhodes I really appreciated The Last Fair Deal Going Down. The intricacy and subtle ingenuity in this book were breathtaking. I am always blown away by his character development and monologues. Granted the story was a bit abstract, I found myself really forcing myself to just "let go" and allow the book to take me wherever it wanted.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it 40 years ago. Remains lodged in my mind as a difficult read but rewarding.

[Craig W. · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's difficult for me to accept that the author of this book is the same as the author of Driftless, a novel that I loved reading and admire a great deal. Then again, the books were written 36 years apart. For all I know, this may go down as a great novel, but it didn't feel that way to me. I don't mean to say that the writing isn't intelligent, it is. But reading it was a slog, the language dense and not a little confusing in places. It was somewhat Faulknerian, somewhat Cormac McCarthian, but not as satisfying as either one. It is part Bildungsroman and part parable. The plot is grounded in mythic themes--family curses and the harrowing of hell. There is social criticism, but it tends to lose much of its power for me due to the tangential nature in which it is offered. For those who enjoy symbolism (I do), symbols abound. The first half of the novel is narrated in first person, the last in third person--but the third person narrator is the first narrator looking at his actions from outside himself--an interesting concept that I'm not convinced was necessary to the storytelling. In the end, I'm partly glad I stuck with it, if only to experience an author's storytelling development over 30+ years, but also partly peeved that I stuck with it, rather than move on to another book on my reading stack.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am sorry I read this before I have had a chance to read other works by this author as it will be hard for me to convince myself to do so. The book demands a great deal from the reader, and offered me few rewards. His descriptive capabilities are considerable but rambling and exceedingly strange story evasive. I entertained hope that with its odd premise of "The City" some interesting narrative like Chadron accomplished (with his unusual premise of Sitka AL replacing Palestine as a Jewish haven after WWII) in the Yiddish Policemen's Union. But I can't say one ever did--in my opinion. I would not recommend this book other than as a study of the author beginning his trade.

[Ace McGee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard book to understand. Lots of long early passages for the purpose of dropping one hint needed for the last half of the book. Was the city in the city real? Was the fog covering part of reality or just the process of his degenerating brain? Did he actually enter the city of no return and exit or was it just a temporary recovery? Started reading, stopped reading, resumed a month later. Lots of back reading required.

[Joyce · Rating 1 out of 5]

There was a small section of this novel that I found intriguing but the whole thing just went off the rails. I probably need someone a lot smarter than me to explain it. No likable characters. The author appeared to be railing against capitalism (which is fine by me) but it just didn't add up to anything that made sense to me. I wanted to yell "pick a genre" and work with it, but instead I quietly finished it and put it in the give away pile.

[Greynomad · Rating 2 out of 5]

difficult to follow

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Artsy kind of dystopian reality; lovely language and surreal.

[Donna J. Murphy · Rating 2 out of 5]

not for me

I loved Driftless and I loved Jewelweed. But this novel and The Easter House is way beyond my little minds abilities to “get it”. I didn’t care.

[Hailey]

I don’t even know how to rate this or what to say honestly

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a little too strange for me.

[Darald Wieneke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just couldn’t get into it. Left early.

[Molly · Rating 1 out of 5]

A bit disorganized--each chapter was linked yet stood alone, which can be remarkable, but in this case, it muddled things a bit. The narrative started off strong, though dark: one brother inexplicably murdering his wife in a gruesome manner, another brother suddenly stalking another woman inexplicably. These were enough for me to cringe, plot-wise. I appreciated the excerpts where the protagonist translated books into Braille for his sister and began working on a farm. These felt rooted, true. And both elements were whisked away as the narrative kept snowballing, flinging away narratives for a new one.

And throughout, there were strange references to a City with monuments that opened and closed in town, but never enough was revealed to accept it as part of the story. Things simply brushed by the reader, the characters, in reference to this alleged City. Then came the final chapter, where the narrator has had a head injury and the City, which had been mentioned in his moments of sanity (though always, there is an allusion to the fact that this story is being written by the protagonist after the action) represents a kind of ultimate internal hell: buried beneath the earth, citizens fed by other citizens' flesh, a possible incestual interaction with a sister who disappeared in the City long ago, a third brother, who killed their father by betting him into overdosing on alcohol, the iceman, who totes flesh on ice to feed these mole-ish people.

I'm not sure what to make of all this plot smashed together like this. I sometimes thought to House of Leaves, and its strange descent into madness, but somehow, that book felt controlled, level, despite the tricks on the page and the in-and-out focus. It's not that I need things to fit together, but I do need to feel as if the author has intention.

I wonder how, after all these years, the author feels about this book. I haven't read anything else by the author, but I felt, when Driftless came out, that there was a kind of gimmick to it, to relaunching his older books and this newer one--perhaps the story of the author was more compelling than what he was writing. This is, anyway, the bits of marketing that came across to me, and I want to believe it isn't a true interpretation, so I'm leaving myself open to Driftless, though I'm going to give it some time before I invest in reading it.

[Jeri Mihm · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the back-story of this author, and was interested to see what kind of author he was. The beginning of the story kept me hooked, wondering what else could happen to this unfortunate family. I thought the concept of the City shrouded in fog was odd, but was willing to see where the story went.

Although Mr. Rhodes is a talented writer, the story just got weird. I think I get it, that the City is our own personal hell (or perhaps the dark side of one's psyche) but I was not impressed overall with the way the story ended. I did enjoy the prose - I could *see* the pictures he painted with his words -but it was not a story that I enjoyed. I was glad to see the story end.... and I did something I've never done before. I returned the book for a refund.

My two star rating is simply for the author's skill at his craft. The story? maybe 1/2 star.

[Molly Ewing · Rating 1 out of 5]

This early (1972) David Rhodes novel is interesting as a study of the writer's development. I can see elements that Rhodes uses more deftly and to better effect in later works-- the hardscrabble, working class family of eccentrics that never gets a break, the beauty and claustrophobia of small town life, the setting of classic themes (Dante's Inferno, the Odyssey) in an American landscape, the disturbing insanity at the core of each of us, the unreliability of the narrator and even the reality of the story itself-- are all at play here. Memorable though the novel is, I found it ultimately unsatisfying, rather like a meal too rich and not carefully planned.

[Gail Bolson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy reading this book but it seemed the author is unable (or unwilling) to edit or filter his ideas. It seems if he had a thought, no matter what it was, it was thrown into the book, an "everything but the kitchen sink" mentality. I felt much like I feel at a Quentin Tarantino movie; there's just so much that after a while you become jaded and almost immune to the horrors shown. (I realize he was 22 when he wrote it so I will cut him some slack.) I plan to read "Driftless" soon and I do enjoy his writing style.

[Bea · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I have really like David Rhodes before, this one is just too weird. A family moves to a city that has a "fog" in the middle, where people venture into and disappear and are never seen again. Right near the beginning the family loses their little daughter and it was just too depressing. I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue just to see if they ever got her back. I lost all interest in it.

[Alaina Herfindal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love it- my mind spiraled down - the imagery is so vivid I still find myself reliving parts of the book as I look at everyday life.

[ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book. For Rhodes' first novel, I think it's a great first work.