The Clearing

by Tim Gautreaux

The story of a murderous battle for control, and a wise, compassionate investigation into the bonds of love and family and of what sustains people through loss.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Southern, Historical, Novels, Book Club, Crime

384 pages, Paperback

First published May 11, 2003

About the author

Timothy Martin Gautreaux (born 1947 in Morgan City, Louisiana) is a novelist and short story writer who lives in Hammond, Louisiana, where he is Writer in Residence at Southeastern Louisiana University.
His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, Atlantic, Harper's, and GQ. His novel The Next Step in the Dance won the 1999 SEBA Book Award. His novel The Clearing won the 1999 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance SIBA Book Award and the 2003 Mid-South Independent Booksellers Association Award. He also won the 2005 John Dos Passos Prize.
Gautreaux also authored Same Place, Same Things and Welding with Children—collections of short stories. His 2009 novel The Missing was described as his "best yet" by New Orleans Times-Picayune book editor Susan Larson in a featured article.
Gautreaux notes that his family’s blue-collar background has been a significant influence on his writing. His father was a tugboat captain, and his grandfather was a steamboat engineer. Given those influences, he says, “I pride myself in writing a ‘broad-spectrum’ fiction, fiction that appeals to both intellectuals and blue-collar types. Many times I’ve heard stories of people who don’t read short stories, or people who have technical jobs, who like my fiction.”
In addition, Gautreaux has made clear that he is not interested in being classified as a "Southern writer," preferring instead to say that he is a "writer who happens to live in the South." He is much more comfortable embracing his Roman Catholicism, saying, "I've always been a Roman Catholic, since baptism, since birth."

Reviews

[Candi · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

"Nimbus—that place tethered to all of civilization only by a few miles of buckled railroad."

When Randolph Aldridge arrived in Nimbus, Louisiana, it seems he truly stepped into another world entirely. Sent on a mission by his father, Randolph, or Rando, is assigned two rather hefty tasks – that of turning around a failing lumber mill and that of convincing the mill’s constable, who happens to be his brother, to return home to Pittsburgh and the family business. What Rando discovers is a land that is harsh and unforgiving, and the people and their way of living perhaps even more brutal than their very surroundings. He also finds his brother, Byron, a broken man. It’s the 1920s and having safely returned in one piece from the WWI battlefields of France, Byron is yet just a shell of the man Rando so fondly remembers.

"His older brother was well educated, big, and handsome, and in spite of a disposition oscillating between manic elation and mannequin somberness, he’d been destined to take over management of the family’s mills and timber. Then he’d gone off to the war, coming back neither elated nor somber but with the haunted expression of a poisoned dog, unable to touch anyone or speak for more than a few seconds without turning slowly to look over his shoulder."

The mill settlement camp itself is consumed by a number of dangerous elements – those of the menacing reptilian variety as well as an assortment of violent men, not the least of which includes Buzetti, an infamous local mafia figure. Mill employees have a penchant for the on-site saloon, where they can gamble away their earnings and drink themselves into savage brutes. "Saturdays spawned fights the way a hot afternoon brewed thunderstorms." The law is hazily defined in the camp, and Byron often wields his own brand of justice. When loved ones are threatened, Rando must come to terms with his brother’s uncivilized methods of discipline and band together to protect their family and their property. The ultimate battle still remains however - that of saving Byron from the depths of his own "self-contained vessel of sorrow." Rando must decide if he can sacrifice his own future happiness for his brother’s sake.

The novel moves along at a brisk pace, with danger lurking around nearly every corner. Tim Gautreaux expertly depicts the isolation and perils of the Louisiana swamplands and molds his characters with such skill that they become quite real to the reader. Besides the brothers and Buzetti, there a number of other characters that come to life in between the pages of this book. The brothers’ wives as well as an ambitious housekeeper are all strong female figures; and the camaraderie between a marshal and a priest left me wanting for more from these two admirable men. And then there is the horse, who perhaps best understands the destructive power of mankind. I am thrilled to discover yet another author that will allow me to sink my teeth into more excellent southern literature.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

“This is a novel so firmly located and vividly realized that you can almost smell the Louisiana swampwater as you read. The dank cypress forests with their deadly wildlife – venomous snakes and lurking alligators – form the perfect foil for a violent, brooding narrative of revenge and reconciliation.” – Jem Poster, The Guardian


In a literal and figurative sense Tim Gautreaux’s book is a journey tale. In the 1920’s, two brothers from Pennsylvania travel to the Nimbus lumber mill in the cypress swampland of Louisiana; one by the most direct route possible and the other by way of Kansas and points west.

Their figurative journeys also differ. One is a WWI veteran who, suffering from what in that day was called “shell shock,” is trying to escape his past, while the other attempts to learn about that past in an effort to help his brother deal with his demons, but in the process learns some lessons and reaches some conclusions about himself that he would have never realized had he not journeyed to Nimbus.

One of the lessons that he learns in the most painful way possible is that violence sometimes must be resorted to in order to combat a greater violence.

Among the horrendous scenes in the book is one involving an alligator and another involving a cottonmouth. But as dangerous as those two creatures might be they are pikers in comparison to the humans, the most dangerous creatures of all.

The violence is somewhat leavened by the influence of three sharply drawn female characters, two of whom are married to the brothers and the other a mixed race housekeeper for the brother-manager of the camp. The housekeeper’s child also plays an important civilizing role in the story.

In the end, after the last large cypress is cut and the camp is vacated there are only stumps and a blind horse to mark the passage of the human activity that transpired there. It is then that Nimbus is turned back over to the gators and cottonmouths and the other swamp creatures that dwell there.

Gautreaux is a confident writer and an accomplished story-teller. He has a good eye and ear for detail and the result is a book that will entertain, enlighten, and remain in the reader’s memory for a long time.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Below this Louisiana mill was a spongy green area,
a cypress swamp that had been explored mostly by snakes of marsh above the pale blue waters of the Gulf”.

I recently enjoyed the swamps and gripping storytelling of “The Missing”, by Tim Gautreaux.
And you know what they say...
“Give a kid a yummy cookie, and they come back wanting more”.

I’m starting to feel at home with the swamps - snakes - alligators- rustic uncivilized living - drunken men - violence -muddy river water -
even though I’ve never been to the south...( yet).

This story is set in an isolated town: Nimbus, Louisiana in 1923.
Lots of cypress trees, snakes and alligators- a saloon- but no school or church.

Byron Aldridge, (from a wealthy family in Pennsylvania), is back home from WWII.
Having killed a man during the war, changed him forever.
It felt as though Bryon couldn’t get comfortable in his own skin once back home with his family - ( who shunned who?)...
His family noticed every little change about him- ( less happy, less charming, less everything)...giving Byron enough reason to bolt.
He ends up in Nimbus... working as a constable at the mill.

Byron’s father sends his younger son, Randolph, to bring Byron back home. The father buys the mill.
Ha...neither of the brothers return home to dad.... not before they both dive deeper into understanding themselves - each other - and ‘clear-up’ some confusion they have about life - death - and violence.
We ponder the question, “is it justifiable to use violence against violence?”
Rudolph ends up being the one who takes charge of the mill.
The relationship/reuniting
between the two brothers were complex.
They were in a small community town with a gang of boozing -gambling-Sicilians... totally different than where they came from.
Randolph began to understand that most of what he knew about music, women, or the business he learned from his Byron - his older brother.
He had things to learn for himself.
Our hearts go out to both brothers. Their relationship is really touching.
I happen to have a special fondness for male bonding..
as so much of my reading are with women relationships.

As my second book by Tim Gautreaux- I can say he’s becoming one of my newly discovered favorite authors.
More please?

“The Clearing”, is a wonderful mixture of family, - (the brothers wives add interesting elements )....suspense, sacrifice, crime & corruption, setting & atmosphere, war, romance, racism, while looking at a serious thought provoking theme:
are there ever circumstances when the right moral choice would be to kill someone? This theme seriously challenges us, as readers.

Gritty with violence...
soulful insights about community, family, and life...
....eloquently written...brilliant story...
....I’ll be thinking about this one for awhile.

[Zoeytron · Rating 5 out of 5]

The year is 1923 in Poachum, Louisiana.  The cypress swamps provide ample fodder for the Nimbus sawmill.  Humidity hangs like a wet curtain, the air is rife with mosquitoes coating the back of your neck, their high-pitched buzzing keening in your ears even as stink bugs run rampant between your collar and neck.  The walls sweat, there are alligators with which to contend, and cottonmouth snakes that turn up in unlikely places.  The mud envelops everything, and the wind blows its bad breath in a losing effort to cool.  Bullfrogs the size of cantaloupes, and a blind horse with no name.

There is a richness to this writing that would seem to belie the ugliness of the subject matter.  Broken spirits, abject poverty, dirty deeds, and a few nasty soulless men.  As one ages, it tends to make one look for the purpose of things, to determine if there might be a job left undone.  Small tendrils of life snake their way through a fine story.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am finding it hard to write a review that will do justice to this novel without resorting to over-the-top adjectives and lots of exclamation marks. Let me start with the beautiful language and metaphors that the author uses. Like "the many fanged geography" of the swamp, for one.

I guess the best description of this story is multi-layered. There are layers upon layers of history, or personalities, of relationships, of love and hate and justice and personal responsibility. The way that all of these things come together to make or destroy human lives is riveting and soul stirring. The characters and setting are so well portrayed that you literally feel like you live with them. And let's not forget the swamp itself, the "many fanged geography" mentioned above. It was a harsh environment that created an isolated existance for the owners and their wives and the sawmill hands. The setting is 1923-1928, and it was quite thought provoking when phone lines were finally installed at the mill and the sherriff was in awe of how easy it was to get in touch with anyone at any time, just because of lines on poles that could find them, just like magic.

WWI was over when this story opens, but its effects were still visible in 2 characters in particular,one of the good guys, and one of the bad. A major theme in this book is the morality of killing, even when it's justified, as in war or self defense. "All the things that never happened, just because someone had died."

So, as I said, multi-layered. A lot of things, people from different parts of the U.S., from different countries, different ages and philosophies, good and evil, nature, progress, all these things come together to make one hell of a novel from an author I was not familiar with until now. Tim Gautreaux is now on my radar, and I can't wait for a new one from him.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book on Sunday 12th but was away from home last week and didn’t have the opportunity to write reviews. Normally I write my reviews straight after finishing a book. This one is a bit different in being drafted a week later.

I added this book to my TBR list several years ago after reading a review from a GR Friend. It turned out to be a prefect fit for my taste. Set in 1920s USA, lead character Randolph Aldridge travels from his comfortable Pittsburgh home to manage a lumber mill in a cypress swamp in Louisiana. His older brother Byron, a disturbed WW1 veteran, is the sole lawman in the company town for the mill.

Randolph finds himself in an environment radically different from anything he has been used to. As he travels south, stone houses and tarmac roads give way to dirt tracks and wooden shacks. I’ve never been fortunate enough to visit the American south, but the author creates a marvellously evocative picture of the steamy Louisiana swamps. Part of this novel is the story of whether Randolph can adapt, and not just to the climate and geography. His new world is a place where working men drink, gamble, brawl and pick knife fights with one another. Byron handles it all with what might be described as a “flexible” approach to law enforcement. He though, is struggling to adapt in a different sense, to being back in the “normal” world after his experiences in WW1.

The two brothers also come into conflict with the local branch of the Sicilian Mafia, who can call on their Chicago relatives when they need back-up. The brothers are faced with a choice – they can do whatever the Mafia say, or they can fight back, but it’s a difficult fight when one side has to (more or less) obey the rules and the other doesn’t. As another of the characters, a U.S. Marshal, puts it, “they can do things to us we can’t do to them.” The climax of the conflict with the mobsters had a real “page-turner” feel to it.

The quality of dialogue can be an important factor in whether I enjoy a novel, and I thought the dialogue was excellent in this one. Lastly I found the characters to be realistically drawn for the period. Randolph is a decent enough guy who treats his workers fairly by the standards of the day, but ultimately he is there to make a profit by keeping wages low and production high. The two brothers discuss the fate of the cypress swamp which Randolph is destroying, but there is no modern-day sentiment about the environment. The author avoids the trap of imposing modern-day attitudes on people in the 1920s. Although the novel is focused on the fate of the two brothers, there are also 3 significant female characters in the form of their respective wives, and Randolph’s housekeeper.

I will be looking out for other books by Tim Gautreaux.

[Kansas · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2023...

"Pero entonces se fue a la guerra y, cuando volvió, la euforia y la seriedad habían desaparecido. En su rostro se había fijado la expresión ausente de un perro envenenado y era incapaz de tocar a nadie o hablar más de unos segundos sin volver la cara lentamente para mirar por encima del hombro."

"The Clearing" (aquí titulada como Luisiana 1923) es una novela ambientada en los años 20, un gótico sureño de pura cepa que cuenta la historia de dos hermanos, Byron y Randolph Aldridge, que tras volver de la Primera Guerra Mundial, el primero, atormentado por los estragos que esta guerra ha dejado en su mente, e incapaz de soportar la presión de las expectativas de su padre, Byron huye de la casa familiar en Pittsburgh, y nunca más se supo de él... se aleja de su familia, dejando solo a su hermano menor a cargo del negocio familiar. En 1923, cuando la familia averigua que Byron se encuentra trabajando como agente de la ley en Nimbus, una ciudad construída a los pies de un vasto bosque de cipreses en Luisiana, su padre compra el bosque y envia a su hermano Randolph con la excusa de hacerse cargo del aserradero, reconstruirlo y reconvertirlo en negocio boyante, lo que dará tiempo a Randolph para convencer a su hermano para que vuelva a casa.

"Ella notó el temblor de sus brazos, una secuela de la neurosis de guerra, aunque él no parecía darse cuenta de que recorría su cuerpo como mensajes, todos los días."

La novela de Tim Gautreaux me ha sorprendido mucho por lo bien construida a pesar de de ser una especie de mezcla de géneros entre el western y el gótico más descarnado porque independientemente de que su base esté asentada en el eterno enfrentamiento entre el bien y el mal, la violencia enfrentada a la lucha por mantener la paz en un entorno muy hostil, Gautreaux lo lleva a su terreno y la convierte sobre todo en una novela psicológica donde una serie de corrientes subterráneas en torno a sus personajes marcan el ritmo continuamente. El vínculo fraternal de los hermanos Aldridge es frágil y mucho más complejo de lo que parece a simple vista. Byron vuelve de la guerra marcado y entrando en continuos arrebatos de ira con la influencia que esto ejerce en su entorno, sobre todo porque su trabajo como agente de la ley le tiene en la cuerda floja. Y en una novela donde la mayoría son hombres, en un ambiente violento, Tim Gautreaux ha construido tres personajes femeninos maravillosos... ¿para que más? si estas tres mujeres, Lillian, Ella y May, ya conforman un retrato fascinante sobre el papel de las mujeres en un mundo donde se las tenían que ver y desear para visibilizarse.

"Agradecía el exceso de trabajo, porque lo agotaba y hacía que cada noche cayera en un profundo sueño, como una piedra lanzada a un estanque, demasiado cansado para soñar con los rostros de los hombres que había matado."

Cuando Randolph abandona la cómoda Pensilvania por orden de su padre para llevar a Byron de nuevo al seno familiar, y pisa los pantanos de Luisiana hasta llegar a Nimbus, se adentra en una especie de infierno en la tierra. Nimbus, es una ciudad que vive de los bosques y del negocio de la madera, un campamento maderero cuyo centro neurálgico es el aserradero como sostén económico, pero es también una especie de ciudad sin ley que se encuentra en medio de ninguna parte, alejada de la civilizacion, húmeda, descarnada, donde las serpientes, el alcohol y los tiros campan a sus anchas. La desesperación de Randolph es especialmente dolorosa cuando se reencuentra con su hermano porque enseguida es consciente de que Byron no es el mismo de antes de la guerra, increiblemente violento en algunos momentos roza una especie de locura.

"MIientras la voz de Bessie Smith llenaba la casa con 'Downhearted Blues', ella volvió a la cocina y se sirvió un buen vaso de vino.
-Ese disco que pediste es demasiado triste -dijo él.
Ella lo miró quieta, inexpresiva.
- La tristeza de unos hace felices a otros, supongo.
-No deberías beber. Es un hábito q va a peor
-¿Es el hábito o lo que causa el hábito lo que va a peor?"

Uno de los puntos más interesantes de esta novela estupenda y totalmente adictiva, se encuentre en la dicotomía que Tim Gautreaux establece en torno a los dos hermanos, y la evolución que sufren a lo largo de la historia. Randolph, que había llevado hasta ahora una vida cómoda en una ciudad totalmente civilizada, casado y sin hijos, no había vivido la realidad de la vida hasta que llegó a Nimbus. Cuando pisa por primera vez los pantanos y se enfrente al racismo y a la violencia imperante, comenzará a convertirse en otra persona. La misma evolución la sufrirá su hermano Byron a la inversa. Es una historia firmemente asentada en el cambio de unos personajes que se ven obligados a sobrevivir en un entorno que no da tregua, una tierra dura, húmeda y todavía salvaje que por momentos se rebela ante los cambios que el hombre está ejerciendo sobre ella talando árboles y convirtiendo en un desierto baldío lo que en un principio era un paraiso forestal. El autor aborda la influencia del hombre en la naturaleza por necesidades de supervivencia arrasando todo a su paso, pero en ningún momento convierte la novela en un alegato ecológico ya que este sentimiento moderno no existía en aquella época, sus miradas están en otro terreno: el terreno de las emociones y hasta qué punto el ser humano se adapta y sigue avanzando.

"Randolph y Lillian volvieron a Pensilvania en Navidad y se dieron cuenta, con cierta sorpresa, de que ya no les atraía la nieve ni la comida insípida.
 [...]
 ... y después volvieron al sur, a la ignorancia y a la buena comida, a la pobreza y a la independencia, y a Nimbus, ese lugar que pendía de los pocos kilómetros de vía que lo unían a la civilización." 

Otro punto interesante es la forma en que Gautreaux construye sus diálogos, que fluyen con una naturalidad pasmosa, maravillosos en algunos puntos donde se da a entender más de lo que pueden decir las palabras y por otra parte, esta naturalidad convierte a sus personajes en seres de carne y hueso totalmente creibles, huyendo del estereotipo. Otros momentos, en los que Randolph se ve enfrentado a sí mismo mientras canaliza el huracán emocional en que se convierte su vida a la llegada a aquel lugar que en un principio le pareció el infierno y más tarde le hizo reconciliarse con sí mismo, es otro de los puntos más emotivos y que más se me han quedado grabados. En Randolph Aldridge, Gautreaux ha construido un personaje que me ha emocionado en muchos momentos.

"Mientras le arrancaba al instrumento trinos de notas que zumbaban como abejas, Randolph recordó el tacto de su mujer y la mano de su hermano en el hombro mojado por el agua del estanque."
[…]
"- ¡Has matado! -dijo ella, gritando.
Randolph extendió los brazos hacia su esposa, pero ella fijó la vista en la lámpara que estaba sobre la mesa y bajó la intensidad de la luz; y él sintió que su verdadero yo desaparecía, que se convertía en un manchón parduzco sobre el decorado de la vida de aquella mujer, un bosquejo monocromo de lo que él había sido."

Tim Gautreaux ha construido una novela donde hay momentos en que se puede sentir la humedad, el calor, y se visualizan a la perfección las inundaciones que plagaban el campamento maderero, el sonido de los árboles al caer…, el espacio físico... es fundamental y tiene un poder casi tan importante como sus personajes, y es este paisaje el que marca en muchos momentos el estado de ánimo de sus personajes. Hacia tiempo que no me sumergía en una novela de género tan adictiva, normalmente todas me aburren y sin embargo, Luisiana 1923 ha resultado una novela conmovedora y emocionante que recomiendo totalmente. Volveré sin duda a Tim Gautreaux.

"El chico describió un círculo con el brazo, para señalar el exterior, el mundo, y el movimiento expresó lo atrapados que estaban todos allí: cómo el barro y los árboles los aislaban de todos."

[...]

"-Un bosque sirve para algo más que para acabar convertido en tablas y contraventanas
-¿Cómo qué?
-Pues no sé..., para contemplarlo, simplemente."

 

[LA · Rating 5 out of 5]

This gorgeous, somewhat brutal story is about two adult brothers from Pittsburgh who together end up in a south Louisiana cypress forest. The Clearing is set in the 1920s - a time when clearcutting was done so thoroughly that the landscape afterward resembled the moon. Although there is plenty of money to be made, the end result is harsh and ugly.

One brother is there in this backwater swamp to escape horrible memories of the war, and the other comes to save his much adored big brother from deep melancholy and a world of violence. They are from an affluent family who own tracts of land and timber mills all over the United States, yet Byron the oldest has thrown away a charmed existence to live amidst black mud, water moccasins, rough men, and alligators that can snatch down a wobbling drunk on his way home alone. Rando joins him and the swarms of mosquitoes out of love and manages the clearing and selling of virgin cypress, always hoping that his brother will return home with him when it is finished.

The wives of these two men are incredibly strong, and when a little baby is used as a point of vengeance from the local mafia, they stand proud as the brothers, their cajun friends, and timber workers of all colors take a stand for justice.

Although I first read this book 2 years ago, I recently nominated it for my book club, and we did a full moon paddle on a local bayou to add atmosphere to our discussion. We live in south Louisiana on the edge of the wetlands, so obviously the setting of this book and the dialect of our Cajun population was as familiar as the voice of the man we buy shrimp from. The author lives only 20 miles from here, and I promise that you will not find a more authentic Louisiana story than this. So, yeah - Im biased.

Beyond our wetlands, though, there is a universality in the deep bonds between brothers across this world that transcends time and place. "A River Runs Through It" has a similar feel to this novel, but the depth of love here is profound. While what the Aldridge brothers faced in this story of historical fiction may be somewhat unique - paddlewheel boats and steam operated trains not withstanding - the sacrifices one makes for the other will break your heart. A beautiful guy book. 5 stars and on my favorites shelf.

[Joy D · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the 1920’s during Prohibition, protagonist Randolph Aldridge, son of a Pennsylvania lumber baron, travels to Louisiana to find his elder brother, Byron, and manage one of his father’s sawmills. Randolph takes the train to Nimbus, an isolated logging town, where Byron functions as the arm of the law. Byron is estranged from his family after returning from his service in WWI, where he has suffered psychological trauma. The sawmill hands work hard, drink hard, and fight hard, often leading to violent confrontations. A mafia boss controls the local saloon and brothels, which adds to the violence.

The setting is vividly described. The writing is atmospheric and evokes a strong sense of the Louisiana swamps. The characters are particularly well-drawn. The relationship between the brothers is key. Byron has withdrawn to the edges of civilization and Randolph wants to help him reconnect with life. During his melancholy moods, Byron plays a series of sad songs on the Victrola. Randolph cares deeply for his brother, eventually making a significant sacrifice. The supporting characters are believable and given enough backstory to picture them as part of this small remote community. Even the blind horse has a unique personality.

I particularly enjoyed the writing style in passages such as: “Ella appeared in the doorway and leaned against the frame, looking at her brother-in-law. After a while she placed a finger below a dry blue eye. At first Randolph didn’t understand, but then he turned and saw that Byron was crying, his lips formed carefully around each note of the song issuing thin and one-dimensional from the mahogany cabinet. Randolph sat as still as wood, his lips parted, his disbelieving breath coming lightly between his lips. Out in the mill yard, rain began to fall, and the house shook as the blind horse bumped its head against the porch post.”

This book strikes a satisfying balance between character and plot. It is dark and violent but contains offsetting elements of decency and redemption. It features many voices, such as the northern outsiders, Cajuns, Creoles, African Americans, and Italians. It gets the reader thinking about how violence impacts people and nature. I am impressed by the author’s craftsmanship.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tim Gautreaux writes about the South and Louisiana the way you might speak of a old, mangy dog that you love but know others might not. His writing shows all the wounds and the rough underbelly of society, but somehow manages to convey that people who are struggling here are somehow more alive than their safer brothers in the settled North.

There are so many dangers and frightening animals in these pages. Cottonmouth snakes and alligators and mosquitoes that cover men like second skins, but nothing is as frightening or dangerous as the human element that stalks the swamps with guns and knives and lead pipes.

The two brothers who form the nucleus of this novel, Randolph and Byron Aldridge, are often in over their heads, trying to deal with lawlessness, personal vendetta, and immorality. Their relationship with one another is touching and real, constantly proving that old adage that blood is thicker than water...a theme that is reflected back at us in the persons of their main enemies, Buzetti and his cousin, Couch. There are strong women as well, represented by the wives of these men and their mixed-blood housekeeper, who weather both the difficult environment and the unpredictability of their men.

After dark, he thought too much and sometimes drank, and one quiet evening when he heard from across the yard Byron wake howlin out of another dreamed bloodletting, he saw that his one killing did not stack up against the ranks of German Kinder his brother had packed off to darkness. While this thought didn’t comfort him, it gave him perspective on the deep well of foreboding into which his brother sank each time he opened his eyes on a sunrise.

Byron, a man broken by war, is hiding the middle of a battlefield. Randolph, who is tied to his brother by memory and affection but fails to understand him, witnesses something of the horrors his brother has experienced and learns what it is to face an enemy with only the choice of kill or be killed. This is a tale of sacrifice and redemption, layered like a good Southern biscuit. I loved it.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating story of a lumber mill in Nimbus, Louisiana from the time it sits itself down in the midst of a Cyprus forest in 1923 until six years later with the felling of the Last Tree when it takes itself apart leaving a blind horse and a wasteland of Cyprus stumps. At the end of the story the principal characters, brothers Byron and Randolph, energetically ("grimacing or grinning, who could tell") pump a railroad handcar away from the cleared mill site “toward what they would have and what would have them.”

But when I got to page 98, I knew one of the things the book was about: war is a business, a deadly business.

He’d gone over in 1914 as an observer for the Zeus Powder Company, which paid him to study ammunition consumption so they could plan their factory expansion and production lines. After traveling in France for two months and watching Germany grind Belgium into meal, he wrote home that the U.S. government, nervous about the expanding, ceaseless slaughter, had hired him to provide intelligence.

I went to enter a new category for The Clearing on my GR page: war. This is a book about war and what it does to men, ordinary men. It shows the true meaning of cannon fodder.

The Clearing has something special: good writing. Sometimes there is just a paragraph like this one that does not add a lot to the storyline but is just a joy to read. Merville is the marshal in the town near the lumber mill. In his old age his double barreled shotgun has gotten too heavy for him to carry on his rounds so he takes a small pistol.

Merville was in his waterfront office putting down pans over the warped floor boards while a thunderstorm spun whorls of water against the sweating windows. His arthritis bound him at the hips and knees, and his chest ached as if a mule had kicked him. Sitting at his desk, he signed the last form he had to fill out for that night. He was trapped by the storm, immobilized into thinking, and he closed his eyes, remembering his wife, who had hated lightning, and his father, who’d been the same way. Now and then, in the long nights Merville’s life replayed like a wrongly spliced silent film, an overlong saga that always ended with his sitting in this water-stained office, or sometimes in the empty house two blocks away. He looked up at the flickering bulb on its cloth cord, whose light barely revealed the ceiling’s corners where soot-bagged spider webs held leggy husks dead since the war in Cuba.

This book sometimes just immobilized me into thinking. The pages early in the book describing the slaughter on the WWI battle field come back to me. It’s lasting impact on Byron as he tries to move on with his life. The war that feeds the capitalistic economy and that lays the bodies of young men laden with armaments from the Zeus Powder Company on the barbed wire at the battlefront. When will we ever learn? War is not the answer.

War makes men into killers. The Clearing is about men who have learned to be violent killers even in the absence of a war. And (a la the Milgram Shock Experiments of the 1960s) how people will obey orders to behave in a violent manner that they might otherwise decline to do voluntarily.

The environmental devastation of the lumber mill – the rape of the land – is equivalent to the moral devastation of warfare. The shell-shocked Byron struggles with a dilemma:

“And I will never understand why I was given carte blanche by the United States government to put thirty-caliber slugs into patriotic German kids, when the law, or guilt, or fate wouldn’t let me hunt down and send to hell a one-eyed snake-wielding baby-killer.”

This is a well-written, powerful book. Having said that, I am torn between four or five stars because things too neatly sort themselves out at the end: a happy ending aided by a lie and unlikely incidents where the bodies nicely compost rather than rot and putrefy. There is too much of a feel-good ending considering all the tragic events of the book. But feel-good with a moral is not bad, a strong four stars. I look forward to reading some of the short stories by Tim Gautreaux.

[Ana Cristina Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

El hombre - y la mujer - contra la naturaleza. Este parece ser el tema principal de esta novela que nos mete de lleno - con calor, frío, barro, mosquitos, caimanes, serpientes - en una explotación maderera que deforesta sistemáticamente los bosques de Luisiana al principio del siglo XX.

Hay muchos elementos que lo pueden clasificar como western: el sheriff, el saloon, el juego, el licor... pero hay mucho más. Está la relación difícil entre dos hermanos, el sheriff Byron que ha vuelto traumatizado de la guerra y Randolf, gerente de la explotación, enviado por su poderoso padre que quiere recuperar al hijo perdido para la familia.

Byron era un recipiente de aflicción al que había que romper para que fluyera. Randolph había pensado que podría conseguirlo con la atención que le dispensaba. El propio Byron se había casado con Ella porque esperaba que esa mujer lo sacaría de su angustioso ensimismamiento. Ninguna de las dos cosas había servido para nada.

La relación entre los dos hermanos es lo que marca el ritmo de la novela, pero el telón de fondo es brutal. Las durísimas condiciones de los trabajadores, el escaso valor de la vida humana y la violencia de las mafias que controlan el alcohol y el juego hacen que sea una lectura difícil a ratos, pero iluminada por muchos personajes de corazón generoso, especialmente Randolph.

El cambio tecnológico de la época está muy presente - a veces demasiado, muchas idas y venidas en los trenes que se me han hecho algo pesadas. Este cambio está encarnado sobre todo por el ferrocarril, las máquinas de la serrería y el teléfono. Percibimos que para los personajes son cosas que están cambiando sus vidas de manera acelerada:

Los tiempos están cambiando - le dijo el viejo sheriff, meneando un contrahecho dedo -. Puedo coger el teléfono y hacer que la gente sepa lo que usted está haciendo. Ya no es posible esconderlo todo.

En conjunto una muy buena lectura que te traslada a una época interesante y difícil.

[Aletheia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bueno pues ya estaría. Ya he leído el libro del año.

No sé si estoy siendo pelín exagerada, puede que sí, es que... cómo me lo he pasado con esta novela. Esta especie de western moderno me ha reconciliado con la narrativa al uso después de una temporada floja. Os cuento rapidito para que podáis aprovechar el resto de la tarde leyendo la novela en vez de mis tonterías: el protagonista de esta novela es el escenario, Nimbus, un asentamiento maderero en medio de un cenagal en Luisiana. Mientras lees notas la humedad del aire, el olor del agua estancada, el serrín, la pólvora y el sudor de los hombres. El momento temporal de la novela, a caballo entre dos épocas es lo que le pone la guinda a la ambientación: caballo, tren, coche, motores a vapor y diésel, telégrafos y teléfono... tiempos de cambio.

Pero no se queda ahí la cosa, porque los personajes son una pasada, me interesaban todos. Claro está, Randolph y Byron, los dos hermanos protagonistas que hace años que no se ven, brillan con luz propia y te motivan a seguir la lectura a ver qué pasa con la relación entre el gerente y el alguacil. Y de propina, Tim nos lanza unos cuantos puñados de secundarios de lujo con historia y personalidad propias, tremendamente bien perfilados.

La historia es emocionante de un modo clásico, con un montón de altibajos típicos de una del oeste, súper divertida, con la dosis justa de drama y violencia; trata un montón de temas diferentes sin que esos pesos pesados detengan la acción: problema medioambiental, racial, desarrollo tecnológico, salud mental, el papel de la música, alcoholismo, relaciones familiares... si toda esta montaña rusa os parece poco, al menos leedla porque tiene un final bestial y a la altura de la historia.

Engancha, tiene descripciones detalladas pero no pesadas, un ritmo arrollador y reflexiones muy profundas que te dejan desubicada por momentos. Un librazo.

[Still · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding work of fiction.
I'd place it up there with the best of Boston Teran or Tom Franklin.

The is the story of the Aldridge brothers, scions of a Pennsylvania lumber baron, set deep in the Louisiana swamps shortly after the 1st World War.

The old man hasn't heard from the oldest son, Byron in years. What little his investigators have learned of the oldest son is that he suffers from maladies related to his time served in the trenches. He is melancholic when he isn't manic, given to sudden outbursts of over-the-top violence.
Fortunately, these acts have occurred during times he's been employed as a lawman in places as far away as the Southwest.

Most recently the old man has learned that Byron is a marshal engaged in the service of a lumber mill operation in southeastern Louisiana. The town is barely a speck on the map -an island in the middle of swamp populated by alligators and water moccasins. No telephones. No telegraphs. No electricity or running water.

Old Man Aldridge dispatches his younger son, Randolph who idolizes his older brother, to go to Louisiana and retrieve his oldest. The old man purchases the lumber-mill outright and names Randolph the mill manager.

When Randolph arrives he can hardly believe how primitive the mill town is. His brother Byron is reasonably happy to see him again after so many years have passed but Randolph is disturbed by how emotionally distant Byron has become, spending nights drinking while listening to maudlin 78's on a brand new Victrola. When not engaged in his melancholic pursuits, he's raising hell, breaking up fights in the local saloon, busting the skulls of brawlers who defy him, and firing his pistols in the air for the pure delight of it.

He jumped up and wound the Victrola twenty times. "You asked about the police life." His voice wobbled with the turns of the handle. "Well, they ran me out of a town where I wouldn't kill a man, and they ran me out of another where I did. I ended up riding fence out West and chasing off rustlers until the marshals and their damned cars arrested them all and put me out of business." He sat back and seemed to try to think of something else to say, putting a hand to his forehead, then taking it down quickly. "The rest you don't want to know about. I just bang around from badge to badge trying to make fellows do right, that's all." His voice was too loud, and Randolph remembered that his hearing had been damaged.

Eventually the brothers run afoul of a gang of thugs -the Buzetti's out of New Orleans. The Buzetti's own the saloon and combination brothel and gambling hall on land purchased from the previous mill owners. The mill workers are losing their pay to the Italians and some of the men are getting injured and killed in fights that occur with increasing frequency.

The Aldridge brothers are aided in their feud by the Cajun marshal of nearby Tiger Island, Merville - a lifelong resident of the region. He's been prepared to let things run their course regarding the Buzetti's ...the sale of tainted whiskey, the trafficking in whores, the crooked gambling parlors, but at the age of seventy-five he figures he has to atone for some of the Hell he's allowed to run loose in his parish.

A far-off train whistle shrieked in the woods and he put an arm over his eyes. He saw the rainstormy day he left his brother muttering on the porch and took his mother to Tiger Island, where she hated town life so much that she died within a month. He became a lawman there in 1895, his job to deal with the leftovers of the great killing, gaunt men who bore in them the poisons of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, Gaines' Mill and Chancellorsville, places where the air itself had sung with gunfire like the ripping of cottonade and thousands of men had jerked backwards into either quick death or the slower mortality of hate, which they would pass on to their children and grandchildren like crooked teeth and club feet.

This is an action-packed tale, populated with unforgettable characters -the saintly and the grotesque. Men and women of such kindness and selflessness it aches your soul to read of their silent suffering and still others so monstrous, so willingly capable of unspeakable meanness that you can't believe it possible the author will find a suitable punishment.

Highest Possible Recommendation!

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gautreaux does so many things well, including things I didn't think I'd care about, such as the descriptions of mechanical objects. (I first noticed that in his short story collection, Same Place, Same Things.) He has an eloquent, lyrical prose style that creates vivid pictures in your mind as you read. His characters are complex and unique, and you come to care about them. He does interpersonal relationships well, without a hint of sentimentality. The dialogue is a pleasure to read, flavored with just a touch of dialect to give a sense of where these people are from, and it's a varied cast.

I think being from Louisiana helped me enjoy this book, as well as the several themes that the book handles so well; but I was still surprised at how much I enjoyed this story of two brothers running a 1920s sawmill community in a cypress swamp on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

Read with a local group for LEH's RELIC program, "Encounter in Louisiana."

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strong 4 rating! The author is so detailed with his descriptions of the land and the lumber camp that when the characters leave you feel homesick. It's amazing how detailed he was in describing the climate and weather of the south. Some may think, give it a rest but this detailing made me feel even more connected to the time and place. Many times I found myself scratching my arms just thinking of all the mosquitoes in that southern bayou. Gautreaux does an amazing job with the characters. I found that I liked all of "the good guys" even with their faults. This book to me was a story about the clearing of the land and the clearing of the conscience. A very strong sense of family and the healing of the heart and mind. Highly recommend.

[Megan Baxter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Clearing is not a book to go to if you're looking for fast-paced action or a driving narrative. It's got a slowly creeping sense of dread, but this will go down best if you're willing to accept its leisurely pace between horrific violences. It grows, slowly, until it reaches a flashover point. And at that point, no one can go back.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing book! I will be back to say more.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few minutes ago I turned the final page on The Clearing, Tim Gautreaux. I'm still trembling. From general exhaustion and distraction, it took me several days to get through the first 80 or so pages; this morning I went through three cups of coffee and 4 instrumental CDs to read the remaining 225. It's an extraordinary book, a captivating story- I learned something about an era (Prohibition), a place (the swamps of Louisiana), a people (lumber/millworkers) and got caught up with a family that both confounded and endeared themselves to me.

THere are so many themes here- the devastating effects of war on those who survive it, the hand of the Mob in the depths of the South, rum-runners, brotherly love, desperate violence-both man and nature-made, the hovel-like conditions of a mill settlement, destruction of the South's beautiful forests, the continued degradation of anyone of color, the poor and women. Yet, Gautreaux never preaches, moralizes or paints anything in black and white. The characters are complex, human, flawed and beautiful. It's an outstanding read.

[a_reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificent. Tim Gautreaux created a wonderful and compelling tale of two brothers running a saw mill deep in the Louisiana Bayou circa mid-1920's. This is a story about war: between nation-states during the First World War; between the Sicilian mob and the local deputies; and between humans trying to tame the harsh physical environment. But amongst all these conflicts there is deep concern and love towards others, especially between the brothers Randolph and Byron.

While reading you can practically imagine yourself in the Bayou with the mosquitoes, snakes, alligators, and the thick humidity and heavy rains. Gautreaux really has a knack for creating the physical landscape written on the page. It is its own character.

Our collective consciousness often forgets how horrible trench warfare was during WWI and this book brings back those violent and painful images to the forefront of our minds. Shell shock was so very serious for those who returned from the front.

Bootleggers, whores, gambling, fist fights and guns. It's all here in all their glory.

"Let me tell you, that Buzetti is one mean son of a bitch. And the people he knows in Chicago will come down here and play marbles with your eyeballs"

The Clearing was selected this month by "On The Southern Literary Trail" and I almost passed it over because for some reason the little blurb did not immediately jump out to me. But my library had a copy so I decided to give it a whirl. Big mistake if I skipped this one. A big one.

Rating: 5 Stars ("It was amazing"). Will definitely read more from Gautreaux in the near future.

[Wyndy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mosquitoes and cottonmouths. Bateaux and choupique. Straight razors and jackknives. Bearded cypress and "mud-choked" swamp. Buckers and sawyers. Revenge and regret. Love between brothers and fortitude among women. A marshal and a priest. Nightmares and baby-making. Mafiosos and drunken whores. And a Victrola with "a male opera singer's voice winding out of place over the stumps and mule droppings."

Welcome to 1920's Nimbus, a primitive sawmill town situated at the edge of hell on the bayous of southern Louisiana, a place "tethered to all of civilization only by a few miles of buckled railroad." This hypnotic tale of brothers Randolph and Byron Aldridge, who reestablish their relationship after years lost to Byron's service in WWI, and their efforts to profitize and civilize a godforsaken outpost filled with every sort of humanity, is one you won't forget. Some of the best dialogue I've ever read, and sensory explosions of every sort.
Unlace your brogans, let down your galluses, and visit the clearing, you.

[Kirk Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Testosterone fueled, violence laden, and pleasantly complex.

[Michael McLellan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solid prohibition era piece set at a cypress logging camp in southern Louisiana. Though this wasn't the main, or even secondary theme of the book, I was particularly moved by the description of the aftermath of clear-cutting a virgin forest. We have been, and are, poor stewards of the natural world. For my part, I am ashamed of that.
The compound began to fill with herons, egrets, owls, bullbats, marsh hens—any feathered thing that lost its cypress home. Grackles lined roof ridges and stared off at the remaining trees crowded with crows and chicken hawks...nothing edible could be left out for fear of the starving raccoons, possums, rabbits, and squirrels that were eating the hides off porch chairs, boots left on the steps, magazines in the privies, and the bright contents of flower posts.
Thanks, Gary, for the book recommendation.

[Jeanette · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel was a difficult read for me. It was not any prose or dialect trend either. But it was the continuity and cohesiveness aspect (scattered more than connected as a flow) and the stark high water levels of violence. Made even more tragic by the reinforcement of the various tracts of WWI trench memories of constant brutal and savage death.

Reading this within one week of viewing on tv (total coincidence and they happen) on The Swamp People- the tracts left by the Cypress lumber process- it was intriguing to read about Nimbus. The man on tv was a descendant alligator hunter but was trolling for big Cypress logs. They call them "gold logs" now. Some of the biggest of all were lost with broken equipment or sunk too far to redirect. And those trunks are just as strong and whole as they were then. Being in water for 100 years is a cipher for their type of constitution.

Actually, this book was and read very much like Deadwood or any other railroad building wild West period endeavor. Just with more wetness, bugs, and snakes than the "usual". And the Saturday night bar or poker table scene similar. Furthermore, not all that different from today's hanging gang banger corner or home "shop". A bunch of highs killing each other with knives and guns. Extremely similar. Often for less than the take as these were too.

The brothers' story made the whole book palatable. But I truly did not enjoy it more than 2 stars. And was considering that rating, but I thought the women's angles and the story of Walter did raise the bar. He is an exceptional writer with an incredible metaphor or simile habit which truly creates a mood and pictures for the reader. Yet this one was not his best, IMHO.

He predicted here it would take 1500 years for the return of a huge Cypress forest. It won't. And there are still right now just a few lanes open enough to even air boat. Cypress smalls have become cypress larges.

Very, very violent. Doctor was the busiest man in the parish.

[Kansas · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2023...

"Pero entonces se fue a la guerra y, cuando volvió, la euforia y la seriedad habían desaparecido. En su rostro se había fijado la expresión ausente de un perro envenenado y era incapaz de tocar a nadie o hablar más de unos segundos sin volver la cara lentamente para mirar por encima del hombro."

"The Clearing" (aquí titulada como Luisiana 1923) es una novela ambientada en los años 20, un gótico sureño de pura cepa que cuenta la historia de dos hermanos, Byron y Randolph Aldridge, que tras volver de la Primera Guerra Mundial, el primero, atormentado por los estragos que esta guerra ha dejado en su mente, e incapaz de soportar la presión de las expectativas de su padre, Byron huye de la casa familiar en Pittsburgh, y nunca más se supo de él... se aleja de su familia, dejando solo a su hermano menor a cargo del negocio familiar. En 1923, cuando la familia averigua que Byron se encuentra trabajando como agente de la ley en Nimbus, una ciudad construída a los pies de un vasto bosque de cipreses en Luisiana, su padre compra el bosque y envia a su hermano Randolph con la excusa de hacerse cargo del aserradero, reconstruirlo y reconvertirlo en negocio boyante, lo que dará tiempo a Randolph para convencer a su hermano para que vuelva a casa.

"Ella notó el temblor de sus brazos, una secuela de la neurosis de guerra, aunque él no parecía darse cuenta de que recorría su cuerpo como mensajes, todos los días."

La novela de Tim Gautreaux me ha sorprendido mucho por lo bien construida a pesar de de ser una especie de mezcla de géneros entre el western y el gótico más descarnado porque independientemente de que su base esté asentada en el eterno enfrentamiento entre el bien y el mal, la violencia enfrentada a la lucha por mantener la paz en un entorno muy hostil, Gatreaux lo lleva a su terreno y la convierte sobre todo en una novela psicológica donde una serie de corrientes subterráneas en torno a sus personajes marcan el ritmo continuamente. El vínculo fraternal de los hermanos Aldridge es frágil y mucho más complejo de lo que parece a simple vista. Byron vuelve de la guerra marcado y entrando en continuos arrebatos de ira con la influencia que esto ejerce en su entorno, sobre todo porque su trabajo como agente de la ley le tiene en la cuerda floja. Y en una novela donde la mayoría son hombres, en un ambiente violento, Tim Gautreaux ha construido tres personajes femeninos maravillosos... ¿para que más? si estas tres mujeres, Lillian, Ella y May, ya conforman un retrato fascinante sobre el papel de las mujeres en un mundo donde se las tenían que ver y desear para visibilizarse.

"Agradecía el exceso de trabajo, porque lo agotaba y hacía que cada noche cayera en un profundo sueño, como una piedra lanzada a un estanque, demasiado cansado para soñar con los rostros de los hombres que había matado."

Cuando Randolph abandona la cómoda Pensilvania por orden de su padre para llevar a Byron de nuevo al seno familiar, y pisa los pantanos de Luisiana hasta llegar a Nimbus, se adentra en una especie de infierno en la tierra. Nimbus, es una ciudad que vive de los bosques y del negocio de la madera, un campamento maderero cuyo centro neurálgico es el aserradero como sostén económico, pero es también una especie de ciudad sin ley que se encuentra en medio de ninguna parte, alejada de la civilizacion, húmeda, descarnada, donde las serpientes, el alcohol y los tiros campan a sus anchas. La desesperación de Randolph es especialmente dolorosa cuando se reencuentra con su hermano porque enseguida es consciente de que Byron no es el mismo de antes de la guerra, increiblemente violento en algunos momentos roza una especie de locura.

"MIientras la voz de Bessie Smith llenaba la casa con 'Downhearted Blues', ella volvió a la cocina y se sirvió un buen vaso de vino.
-Ese disco que pediste es demasiado triste -dijo él.
Ella lo miró quieta, inexpresiva.
- La tristeza de unos hace felices a otros, supongo.
-No deberías beber. Es un hábito q va a peor
-¿Es el hábito o lo que causa el hábito lo que va a peor?"

Uno de los puntos más interesantes de esta novela estupenda y totalmente adictiva, se encuentre en la dicotomía que Tim Gautreaux establece en torno a los dos hermanos, y la evolución que sufren a lo largo de la historia. Randolph, que había llevado hasta ahora una vida cómoda en una ciudad totalmente civilizada, casado y sin hijos, no había vivido la realidad de la vida hasta que llegó a Nimbus. Cuando pisa por primera vez los pantanos y se enfrente al racismo y a la violencia imperante, comenzará a convertirse en otra persona. La misma evolución la sufrirá su hermano Byron a la inversa. Es una historia firmemente asentada en el cambio de unos personajes que se ven obligados a sobrevivir en un entorno que no da tregua, una tierra dura, húmeda y todavía salvaje que por momentos se rebela ante los cambios que el hombre está ejerciendo sobre ella talando árboles y convirtiendo en un desierto baldío lo que en un principio era un paraiso forestal. El autor aborda la influencia del hombre en la naturaleza por necesidades de supervivencia arrasando todo a su paso, pero en ningún momento convierte la novela en un alegato ecológico ya que este sentimiento moderno no existía en aquella época, sus miradas están en otro terreno: el terreno de las emociones y hasta qué punto el ser humano se adapta y sigue avanzando.

"Randolph y Lillian volvieron a Pensilvania en Navidad y se dieron cuenta, con cierta sorpresa, de que ya no les atraía la nieve ni la comida insípida.
 [...]
 ... y después volvieron al sur, a la ignorancia y a la buena comida, a la pobreza y a la independencia, y a Nimbus, ese lugar que pendía de los pocos kilómetros de vía que lo unían a la civilización." 

Otro punto interesante es quizá la forma en que Gautreaux construye sus diálogos, que fluyen con una naturalidad pasmosa, maravillosos en algunos puntos donde se da a entender más de lo que pueden decir las palabras y por otra parte, esta naturalidad convierte a sus personajes en seres de carne y hueso totalmente creibles, huyendo del estereotipo. Otros momentos, en los que Randolph se ve enfrentado a sí mismo mientras canaliza el huracán emocional en que se convierte su vida a la llegada a aquel lugar que en un principio le pareció el infierno y más tarde le hizo reconciliarse con sí mismo, es otro de los puntos más emotivos y que más se me han quedado grabados. En Randolph Aldridge, Gautreaux ha construido un personaje que me ha emocionado en muchos momentos.

"Mientras le arrancaba al instrumento trinos de notas que zumbaban como abejas, Randolph recordó el tacto de su mujer y la mano de su hermano en el hombro mojado por el agua del estanque."
[…]
"- ¡Has matado! -dijo ella, gritando.
Randolph extendió los brazos hacia su esposa, pero ella fijó la vista en la lámpara que estaba sobre la mesa y bajó la intensidad de la luz; y él sintió que su verdadero yo desaparecía, que se convertía en un manchón parduzco sobre el decorado de la vida de aquella mujer, un bosquejo monocromo de lo que él había sido."

Tim Gautreaux ha construido una novela donde hay momentos en que se puede sentir la humedad, el calor, y se visualizan a la perfección las inundaciones que plagaban el campamento maderero, el sonido de los árboles al caer…, el espacio físico... es fundamental y tiene un poder casi tan importante como sus personajes, y es este paisaje el que marca en muchos momentos el estado de ánimo de sus personajes. Hacia tiempo que no me sumergía en una novela de género tan adictiva, normalmente todas me aburren y sin embargo, Luisiana 1923 ha resultado una novela conmovedora y emocionante que recomiendo totalmente. Volveré sin duda a Tim Gautreaux.

"El chico describió un círculo con el brazo, para señalar el exterior, el mundo, y el movimiento expresó lo atrapados que estaban todos allí: cómo el barro y los árboles los aislaban de todos."

[...]

"-Un bosque sirve para algo más que para acabar convertido en tablas y contraventanas
-¿Cómo qué?
-Pues no sé..., para contemplarlo, simplemente."

[El · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story seemed fine enough: One brother has returned from France during World War I a very different man (not uncommon, certainly), and he goes off from his Pennsylvania home to do whatever it is changed men do (ie, not settle down). His brother, Randolph, eventually finds him in Louisiana, goes to try to connect with him again, becomes in charge of the mill town, some other stuff happens, SICILIANS, gunfire, some snake drama, talky-talk, and... yeah.

It was fine.

I expected this to be more like, I don't know, Ron Rash, or some other American author from the south that people really dig. But this just didn't do it for me. I never felt like I connected with any of the characters, and so therefore had no emotional connection to the story, positive or negative. I felt the writing was uninteresting and just sort of existed on the page, but I missed any sort of real feeling behind the story.

I may be disappointed, but I want to try other books by this author, because I think he is someone I would otherwise really enjoy. This one, however, felt like it was trying to be a movie, and therefore didn't work so well as an actual book. Just mentioning a swamp isn't enough to make me feel like I'm actually in Louisiana.

[FrankH · Rating 3 out of 5]

Group Read: On the Southern Literary Trail

Comments:

'The Clearing' by Louisianan Tim Gautreaux has a lot going for it, but it also contains enough niggling disconnects and imbalances in plotting and character to make me wonder if the story itself was meant for the telling.

Gautreaux excels with his lush detailing of the steamy, southern Louisiana bayou lumber mill and there are many fine passages of descriptive writing -- the author's precise rendering of the workmen bringing down the final cypress in the camp is just one example among many. But, ultimately, the novel collapses under its own weight because the chief protagonists, Byron and Randolph Aldridge, keep dithering and won't or can't come to terms with the core issues in their lives.

It's difficult to say what Gautreaux had in mind for the brothers. Fallible characters in a perpetual holding pattern? A study in passivity? Themes of coping and forbearance factor in the human condition, so they're shouldn't be declared off-limits to the enterprising, psychologically oriented novelist brave enough to tackle them. But what obtains when they're allowed to dominate in a long-form shoot-em-up like 'The Clearing'? My thought: That's a dog that won't hunt.

Impasse #1

We are meant to understand that part of the Randolph's mission in coming to Louisiana is to bring home or otherwise rehabilitate the prodigal brother Byron, the parish sheriff of mill town Nimbus, still struggling psychologically with what he saw and did as the WWI doughboy fighting the Germans on the killing fields of France. Yet, as Randolph reports to his father on his brother's condition, no plan is forthcoming for getting Byron into whatever constitutes therapy in the 1920s or, for that matter, putting him out of harm's way, back in the family home located in Pittsburgh. Following the end of the war, some bad blood has flowed between the father, Noah, and his son Byron, so reaching reconciliation may prove difficult. All of them probably desire it, yet due to the nature of Byron's intractable, disordered outlook on life, they can't quite determine how to achieve it. The author has put this issue front and center as a story element, but then permits the characters to walk away from it for most of the novel. We're adrift here.

Impasse #2

At the outset, Randolph believes his tenure in Louisiana is linked to the time it takes to clear the forest -- three years (it will actually take five years before the last cypress is harvested). But neither he nor constable Byron has a time-line for ending the threat of Sicilian mobster Buzetti and henchman Crouch and for closing down the Nimbus honkeytonk and pimping operation preying upon the workers. It's more a matter of containment than a test of courage: Byron thinks closing the saloon would lead to men quitting the camp for the siren allure -- such as it is -- of nearby Tiger Island. Better to keep the men close, he muses, and let them blow off steam in Nimbus where he can be sure the body count won't get too high. As a result of this thinking, though, we continue to get one violent bar and gambling incident after another, without much material change in the nature of the conflict other than an escalated threat level,temporary at its best, a charade at its worst.

At one point, when Byron drags Buzetti's Tiger Creek Saloon into the swamp as a reprisal for a death at Nimbus, the matter appears to be heading towards a final showdown. Buzetti's gunmen come to the camp, looking for vengeance, but then surprisingly pull back as the parish sheriff and the mill hands put on a show of force. The next thing we know Buzetti is approaching Randolph on another matter -- allowing the Sicilian's cousin Vincente to return to his old job as the house gambling operator at the Nimbus saloon. Gautreaux here has doubled down on non-sequiturs. It's strange Buzetti has implicitly dropped the matter of the Tiger Creek Saloon destruction, stranger yet Randolph acts on Buzetti's recommendation to persuade his brother to agree to Vicente's return (Convenient, though, because this turn of events keeps Vicente at Nimbus where he will be killed later by Randolph in another episode). Once again, the Aldridges demonstrate an inability to address an overriding concern in the novel. We've seen the heavy cloud but can't get the rain.

Impasse #3

When the story begins, Ralph is writing to his father about the suffering mill hands, characterizing them as 'rougher' than those in other camps and infused with a sense of 'deprivation or old wrong being done that has gone into their bones'. Yet Gautreaux offers no fully-developed character that gives us a window into this psychology. We are simply being asked to accept the idea that, intrinsically, men like this, under these conditions, behave on the weekend like deranged sub-human sailors on shore leave. With a more temperate work force, of course, the Buzetti problem -- and much of the story -- goes away, or at least improves. But the mill manager makes no effort to figure out what drives the men to self-destructive behavior and makes no move to change the hell-bent, whiskey bound culture found in the camp. Rando should be smarter than this. Following an idea from the Sicilians, can someone please drop a few dollars on these benighted workers and incentivize them to boycott the bar? We're bogged down here.

A Change in the Weather

So, question is, how does this story move forward? Well, it doesn't because it can't, for some prolonged period of time. Finally the actions of three minor players -- the housekeeper May, Randolph's wife Lillian and the old sheriff Merville Thiboudeaux -- break up the roadblocks and lead to altered circumstances and a final climax. It's no thanks to the Aldridges.

I liked the idea that the old Acadian lawman Merville wants to do one good deed before he dies, then steps up with a plan to interdict an illegal bootleg delivery and arrest Buzetti and his men. Still, this represents an abrupt change in point of view. The book goes to great lengths to depict the havoc the Sicilians have visited upon the lumber mill family and, in terms of story logic, they're the ones that need to instrument the action to take down Buzetti, not Thiboudeaux. Deputizing the Aldridges doesn't quite cut it.

Lillian's arrival surely changes the weather of the story; she's setting up church meetings for the working men and their wives and planning to school the kids, but it's an idea which should have occurred much earlier to her husband. May makes a different contribution -- producing her infant son Walter who finds a path into the heart of his uncle and putative father Byron and starts his emotional healing that's been beyond the reach of the Aldridges since day one. You can credit this development to the grace of God or, more directly, to May's stealthy bone-jumping prowess but either way it's clear little Walter's benign effect on Byron's mental balance does not proceed organically from any Aldridge agency.

Final Thoughts

And then again maybe all this stems from the fact I'm very impatient with deliberating, passive characters who can't take care of business in a timely manner.

I certainly understand 'The Clearing' has its champions and I won't discount the possibility I've 'misread' the novel. I surely know Gautreaux can write. When I picked up this volume at the library, I also grabbed his 'Same Place, 'Same Things', an early story collection that I found technically sure-footed and so inventive and incisive I devoured it almost in a single sitting (from where I sit, it definitely warrants a five-star rating).

Still, one day I'd like to have a little talk with Gautreaux's editor.

Good or Not So Good, ya gotta call 'em like ya see 'em.

[Covadonga Diaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una agradable sorpresa, esperaba una novela de aventuras, de pioneros, y me encontré la historia de dos hermanos ricos del Este que sacan adelante un aserradero en las profundidades de Louisiana. Reflexiones sobre la violencia, la terrible PGM, el racismo del Sur. Las mujeres que aparecen son fuertes y sostienen la vida en condiciones tan duras.

[Maral · Rating 2 out of 5]

Abandonado al 40%

[Ctgt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a period piece set in a remote sawmill town in Louisiana just after WWI. A story about two brothers Byron and Randolph. Older brother Byron is the golden boy heir to the family timber business until he is sent as an observer and then later a combatant in WWI. He returns from overseas a changed man and promptly takes off drifting from town to town as a lawman wanting nothing to do with the family. The domineering father locates the prodigal in the milltown of Nimbus, buys the property and sends Randolph down to bring his brother back into the family fold.

Gautreaux did a wonderful job of transporting me both back in time and right into the middle of a swamp edged cypress stand. It's very easy in this technological day and age to forget exactly how isolated these small towns were back then. Basically a mini fiefdom to be controlled by whoever has the willpower. I could feel the sweat rolling off me as he described the heat and humidity and all the local nasties (snakes, gators, skeeters) that infested the area.

Secondary characters were a little thin on development but watching the relationship between the brothers morph throughout the story was the primary and most fascinating focus. A very interesting look at family and the effect of war on the pysche of men.