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Reckoning
Richard Logan begins his summer day as any fourteen-year-old might: working a farm job bringing in hay, avoiding his hard-headed father,and hanging out with his friends. When he stumbles onto an unconscious woman in the woods, he has no idea that the process of helping her will lead him into the darkness of the deeply held deceits of his rural Appalachian town. Both brutal and beautiful, Reckoning shows the seams and limits of family love and community tolerance while Richard discovers where manhood truly lies.
"Rarely can a writer ratchet up a story's tension as relentlessly as Rusty Barnes does in Reckoning, a beautifully told and almost painfully suspenseful novel in which the stakes couldn't be higher. I loved this book."
John McManus, author of Bitter Milk.
"Rarely can a writer ratchet up a story's tension as relentlessly as Rusty Barnes does in Reckoning, a beautifully told and almost painfully suspenseful novel in which the stakes couldn't be higher. I loved this book."
John McManus, author of Bitter Milk.
246 pages, Paperback
First published March 25, 2014
1 person is currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Rusty Barnes
47 books227 followersRusty Barnes is a 2018 Derringer finalist and author of the story collections Breaking it Down (Sunnyoutside Press 2007) , Mostly Redneck (Sunnyoutside Press 2011), and Kraj The Enforcer: Stories (Shotgun Honey 2019), as well as four novels, Reckoning (Sunnyoutside Press, 2014), Ridgerunner (Shotgun Honey/Down & Out Books, 2017), Knuckledragger (Shotgun Honey/Down & Out Books 2017) and The Last Danger (Shotgun Honey/Down & Out Books 2018), His fiction, poetry and non-fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, like Dirty Boulevard: Crime Stories Inspired by the Songs of Lou Reed (Down & Out Books 2018), Best Small Fictions 2015, Mystery Tribune, Goliad Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Red Rock Review, Porter Gulch Review and Post Road. His poetry collections include On Broad Sound (Nixes Mates Press, 2016) and Jesus in the Ghost Room, (Nixes Mates Press 2017). He founded and edits Tough, a journal of crime fiction and occasional reviews. Find him on Twitter @rustybarnes23
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 28, 2016
I would classify this as a sociological or proletarian novel written in the form of a noir mystery. There should be more of them. To some extent, working class noir, and recently writers such as Woodrell, Williamson, Fondation and others “from the other America,” have done great work.
In north-central PA, young people feel they must leave if they can; boys of 14 work from dawn to dusk on farms, everyone knows and has to know guns; Richard’s father knows everything about repairing machinery, and hauling heavy materials around to recondition and sell. Poverty is close, always. And so is spirit, perseverance, and fighting to keep independent enough to make decisions. Richard may make lots of mistakes, but he does so because he lives in an environment “close to the knives.”
Car accidents, burned down buildings, and assaults on the innocent have a strange affinity to natural disasters in this corner of “the other America.”.
There is real evil in this novel, and Barnes integrates it perfectly with Richard’s coming-of-age. That evil is given a history, and a future, that is essentially noir. It is entangled with the major preoccupation of leaving a place where choices are limited and growth a big question mark. Yet Richard and his girl friend, mom and dad are not the kind of people who run away. They grow where they are planted, I think. The focus on Richard is intense. His desires, fears, and relationships, including that to the evil Lyle Thompson, are profoundly imagined. There are Lyles and his criminality everywhere.
I lived in this community and know how fragile its culture is, given the pollution that fracking is now bringing it. Fracking is not mentioned in the book, until the next to the last page, where a “Halliburton truck” pulls into a hospital due to some accident. Shudder.
In north-central PA, young people feel they must leave if they can; boys of 14 work from dawn to dusk on farms, everyone knows and has to know guns; Richard’s father knows everything about repairing machinery, and hauling heavy materials around to recondition and sell. Poverty is close, always. And so is spirit, perseverance, and fighting to keep independent enough to make decisions. Richard may make lots of mistakes, but he does so because he lives in an environment “close to the knives.”
Car accidents, burned down buildings, and assaults on the innocent have a strange affinity to natural disasters in this corner of “the other America.”.
There is real evil in this novel, and Barnes integrates it perfectly with Richard’s coming-of-age. That evil is given a history, and a future, that is essentially noir. It is entangled with the major preoccupation of leaving a place where choices are limited and growth a big question mark. Yet Richard and his girl friend, mom and dad are not the kind of people who run away. They grow where they are planted, I think. The focus on Richard is intense. His desires, fears, and relationships, including that to the evil Lyle Thompson, are profoundly imagined. There are Lyles and his criminality everywhere.
I lived in this community and know how fragile its culture is, given the pollution that fracking is now bringing it. Fracking is not mentioned in the book, until the next to the last page, where a “Halliburton truck” pulls into a hospital due to some accident. Shudder.
February 28, 2014
Intense as all hell. Great read. More thoughts to follow.
June 16, 2014
A story that ratchets up from the first page to the last. You know Richard and Katie, and you feel for them, and you can't look away as they risk it all, and then risk a little bit more.
January 11, 2015
If writers are builders of worlds, then Rusty Barnes may just be a master builder. The bleak world he pieces together in the pared down and finely crafted sentences of RECKONING is propped up with the stark realities of rural society in small town America.
The book is hard to classify. Ultimately it is a coming-of-age-story, and a novel of literary realism. But there are also certain elements of the “new noir” in Reckoning—complete with a socially detached protagonist who aims to solve a central mystery in the novel. In the end, however, as the title suggests, the novel is more concerned with a reckoning—a tallying and judgment of deeds committed by the whole community (and there are some doozies)—than it is with the rites of passage that young Richard Logan must pass through.
The word that kept floating to the surface of my subconscious mind as I read RECKONING was tension. This novel is full of it, which gives it the kind of intensity that keeps a reader turning pages. Violence teeming just below the surface is probably the greatest source of tension throughout the novel. The reader feels as if this rural world could explode at any moment, destroying not only Richard and Katie but the whole community. Richard seems keenly aware of this danger, too. Walking along the river, Richard notes:
The tress at the top of the ravine looked like they were about to fall, half their roots hanging out over the bank and a sandy cascade of rocks and dirt underneath and dropping down into the water. His father had told him one day the whole hill would fall into the ravine and the creek would redirect or no longer exist. Richard hoped he wasn’t here to see it.
The sense of tension caused by this looming destruction is only heightened by the long history of the people who lived there. In Richard’s case, “there’d been someone of his blood in this country for two hundred years.”
There are also less prominent sources of tension within the novel. Mr. Barnes uses the third person limited narrative splendidly in Reckoning. In the right hands, it is a perspective that can be used to incredible effect. The third person limited allows the reader to get into the protagonist’s head and “hear” his thoughts, but also to get a sense of his voice. Yet it is a perspective that creates and maintains an unnegotiable distance between the protagonist and the reader because the thoughts and voice are not coming directly from the protagonist. In RECKONING, the author also uses the TPL perspective to enlarge the sense of detachment Richard feels from his surroundings, from his rural life. This sense of detachment is in direct opposition to Richard’s intricate and unfailing knowledge of the paths, trails, and roads that connect the lives of those in the community. Again, more tension.
The plot of RECKONING is somewhat pedestrian; yet this is in keeping with the understated realism of the novel. There are no twists and turns—no big surprises. And there probably shouldn’t be. There are also a few situations that might raise plausibility issues for some readers. For me, it was Richard’s good-intentioned if misled chivalric notion that he had to protect Mrs. Neary, Katie, and most inexplicably, Misty. (Chalk it up to youthful fantasies, I suppose). However, these are small matters within the larger story. Mr. Barnes authorial craftsmanship prevails throughout. And in the end, RECKONING is a compelling story that needs to be read. More impressive, even, given the fact that it is a debut novel. For my part, I will be watching for more great work from Rusty Barnes. And you should be too. (4.5 stars)
The book is hard to classify. Ultimately it is a coming-of-age-story, and a novel of literary realism. But there are also certain elements of the “new noir” in Reckoning—complete with a socially detached protagonist who aims to solve a central mystery in the novel. In the end, however, as the title suggests, the novel is more concerned with a reckoning—a tallying and judgment of deeds committed by the whole community (and there are some doozies)—than it is with the rites of passage that young Richard Logan must pass through.
The word that kept floating to the surface of my subconscious mind as I read RECKONING was tension. This novel is full of it, which gives it the kind of intensity that keeps a reader turning pages. Violence teeming just below the surface is probably the greatest source of tension throughout the novel. The reader feels as if this rural world could explode at any moment, destroying not only Richard and Katie but the whole community. Richard seems keenly aware of this danger, too. Walking along the river, Richard notes:
The tress at the top of the ravine looked like they were about to fall, half their roots hanging out over the bank and a sandy cascade of rocks and dirt underneath and dropping down into the water. His father had told him one day the whole hill would fall into the ravine and the creek would redirect or no longer exist. Richard hoped he wasn’t here to see it.
The sense of tension caused by this looming destruction is only heightened by the long history of the people who lived there. In Richard’s case, “there’d been someone of his blood in this country for two hundred years.”
There are also less prominent sources of tension within the novel. Mr. Barnes uses the third person limited narrative splendidly in Reckoning. In the right hands, it is a perspective that can be used to incredible effect. The third person limited allows the reader to get into the protagonist’s head and “hear” his thoughts, but also to get a sense of his voice. Yet it is a perspective that creates and maintains an unnegotiable distance between the protagonist and the reader because the thoughts and voice are not coming directly from the protagonist. In RECKONING, the author also uses the TPL perspective to enlarge the sense of detachment Richard feels from his surroundings, from his rural life. This sense of detachment is in direct opposition to Richard’s intricate and unfailing knowledge of the paths, trails, and roads that connect the lives of those in the community. Again, more tension.
The plot of RECKONING is somewhat pedestrian; yet this is in keeping with the understated realism of the novel. There are no twists and turns—no big surprises. And there probably shouldn’t be. There are also a few situations that might raise plausibility issues for some readers. For me, it was Richard’s good-intentioned if misled chivalric notion that he had to protect Mrs. Neary, Katie, and most inexplicably, Misty. (Chalk it up to youthful fantasies, I suppose). However, these are small matters within the larger story. Mr. Barnes authorial craftsmanship prevails throughout. And in the end, RECKONING is a compelling story that needs to be read. More impressive, even, given the fact that it is a debut novel. For my part, I will be watching for more great work from Rusty Barnes. And you should be too. (4.5 stars)
August 3, 2015
While parts of this are darn right disturbing and difficult to read, no one paints the rural modern community in the way that Barnes can: humanistic, gritty, tragic, but transcendent when it deals with family bonds and our connection to the natural world. I also love his attention to the small gestures and facial tics we all have, which say so much:
"Richard couldn't tell what Misty thought. She had three things going on in her face at any one time, he felt: the thing she actually thought, the thing she ought to say, and what she actually might do."
A realistic young romance story within a dark coming-of-age journey.
"Richard couldn't tell what Misty thought. She had three things going on in her face at any one time, he felt: the thing she actually thought, the thing she ought to say, and what she actually might do."
A realistic young romance story within a dark coming-of-age journey.
September 17, 2014
This novel has a great sense of place. Imagine a tiny rural town of the one store variety. Imagine the difficulties farm towns with no money have and what they need to do to survive. Add an interesting cast of characters to the conflict, a coming of age story of an innocent but extremely tough 14 year old protagonist. This book felt like Mayberry and Tom Sawyer meet evil---pills, prostitution, bullying, guns, all the stuff I don't want to run into, yet couldn't avoid in Reckoning; damn I loved it.
October 5, 2014
I don’t usually prefer a book that opens with a gun being fired, as it’s typically followed up by any number of cliches, but the shot that rings out in the opening paragraph of Rusty Barnes’s debut novel, Reckoning, doesn’t take the reader down any familiar paths. From the start we’re immersed in the contrast of characters, the confusion of youth, and the isolation of place. That place is the mountainous backwoods of rural Pennsylvania, a setting that can feed the ignorance of one character while inspiring beauty in another.
The innocent, if not reckless gunshot sets the tone of the entire book and puts the protagonist, young Richard, at odds with his hotheaded employer, enlightens him to scandal, and freshens his eyes with his first sight of bare feminine beauty, all with the smell of gunmetal in his nostrils. Shortly after, Richard and his friends find a young woman stripped, beaten and left to die in the wilderness, and from there we watch Richard take one chivalrous misstep after another. Not once does the reader lose hope in the boy; we feel his adolescent anguish, we remember our own early awkwardness with sexual attraction, and we coach him up when things go bad. I hate to say we cheer him on, but we do. It is high achievement when a writer can conjure up a character the reader truly gives a damn about.
This reader demands context, and Barnes layers just the right amount of detail to absorb you into the scene while never overcrowding with the unnecessary, never overwhelming the plot, and never once encouraging that dreaded lazy-eye habit, the skimming of a paragraph. The only flaw I found in the book was where the author was quick to pace the scene in the closing chapter. But though the book consequently ends in haste, the resolution is true and embodied in my favorite line in the book, “Young was sweet. Old was bitter.”
Barnes is no stranger to the literary community, already noted for two collections each of poetry and short stories. His first novel was overdue and does not disappoint, a fine opening salvo of what will hopefully be a long stout line of books.
The innocent, if not reckless gunshot sets the tone of the entire book and puts the protagonist, young Richard, at odds with his hotheaded employer, enlightens him to scandal, and freshens his eyes with his first sight of bare feminine beauty, all with the smell of gunmetal in his nostrils. Shortly after, Richard and his friends find a young woman stripped, beaten and left to die in the wilderness, and from there we watch Richard take one chivalrous misstep after another. Not once does the reader lose hope in the boy; we feel his adolescent anguish, we remember our own early awkwardness with sexual attraction, and we coach him up when things go bad. I hate to say we cheer him on, but we do. It is high achievement when a writer can conjure up a character the reader truly gives a damn about.
This reader demands context, and Barnes layers just the right amount of detail to absorb you into the scene while never overcrowding with the unnecessary, never overwhelming the plot, and never once encouraging that dreaded lazy-eye habit, the skimming of a paragraph. The only flaw I found in the book was where the author was quick to pace the scene in the closing chapter. But though the book consequently ends in haste, the resolution is true and embodied in my favorite line in the book, “Young was sweet. Old was bitter.”
Barnes is no stranger to the literary community, already noted for two collections each of poetry and short stories. His first novel was overdue and does not disappoint, a fine opening salvo of what will hopefully be a long stout line of books.
August 19, 2014
I’ve been a fan of Rusty Barnes’ short fiction for a long time; his two short story collections are excellent. So I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into his first novel. I wasn’t disappointed.
Fourteen year-old Richard is enjoying a long, slow Appalachian summer, baling hay and trying to save up enough money to buy his own shotgun. But after befriending the new girl in town (Katie), they stumble into a mystery that throws them into harms way, and forces them to grow up—fast.
Barnes doesn’t waste a word here. The writing is crisp and to the point, and the dialogue sounds real. The thing most striking to me, though, was the visual aspect of the writing. I felt like I was there, or watching a movie. Barnes accomplishes this without long boring descriptions of the landscape or the characters. Just short, clean, descriptive wording, like this early scene when, with their friend Dex, they find an unconscious woman in the woods, which sets the whole story in motion:
“Hey, lady,” he said. “ Hey, miss.” The side of her hair was caked in blood and Richard could see a shallow trench dug along the side of her head, right into the hairline.
…“What do we do now?” Dex looked lost, but excited. “Where do you think she came from?” Richard thought he could answer that. He saw a fresh rut of ATV tracks going up the hill toward the logging road that eventually connected with Coryland Road farther up the hill.
“Somebody brought her down here.” Richard pointed in the direction of the tracks.
As Richard gets pulled deeper and deeper into the mystery, we meet the characters of the small town, and Barnes keeps you guessing as to who is involved and who knows more than they’re saying. Richard becomes protective of Katie and her mother and will do anything to keep them safe. This is a coming of age and a loss of innocence tale, and Barnes pulls no punches. He keeps the tension high and the story gallops along at a fast pace until the shocking ending. Definitely one of my favorite books of the year so far.
Fourteen year-old Richard is enjoying a long, slow Appalachian summer, baling hay and trying to save up enough money to buy his own shotgun. But after befriending the new girl in town (Katie), they stumble into a mystery that throws them into harms way, and forces them to grow up—fast.
Barnes doesn’t waste a word here. The writing is crisp and to the point, and the dialogue sounds real. The thing most striking to me, though, was the visual aspect of the writing. I felt like I was there, or watching a movie. Barnes accomplishes this without long boring descriptions of the landscape or the characters. Just short, clean, descriptive wording, like this early scene when, with their friend Dex, they find an unconscious woman in the woods, which sets the whole story in motion:
“Hey, lady,” he said. “ Hey, miss.” The side of her hair was caked in blood and Richard could see a shallow trench dug along the side of her head, right into the hairline.
…“What do we do now?” Dex looked lost, but excited. “Where do you think she came from?” Richard thought he could answer that. He saw a fresh rut of ATV tracks going up the hill toward the logging road that eventually connected with Coryland Road farther up the hill.
“Somebody brought her down here.” Richard pointed in the direction of the tracks.
As Richard gets pulled deeper and deeper into the mystery, we meet the characters of the small town, and Barnes keeps you guessing as to who is involved and who knows more than they’re saying. Richard becomes protective of Katie and her mother and will do anything to keep them safe. This is a coming of age and a loss of innocence tale, and Barnes pulls no punches. He keeps the tension high and the story gallops along at a fast pace until the shocking ending. Definitely one of my favorite books of the year so far.
December 17, 2014
Richard Logan was 14 that summer, and things were pretty much the same as always in his little Pennsylvania town. His parents were caring but stubbornly corrective, his grown relatives and neighbors coarse, hard-working and mysterious, his love-life non-existent. He was full of adolescent yearning and small-town ennui.
Then, so quickly, nothing was the same. There was a naked woman – new in town – running out of the woods with ornery Lyle Thompson close behind her, scared out of a tryst by Richard's careless shot at a woodchuck. Later, there was another naked woman, dumped near a stream like an unwanted dog, found by Richard and some new friends, including the fetching but prickly daughter of the first naked woman.
Now there was a riddle to solve, and women and girls to protect. Lyle Thompson was in it up to his neck, which put him and Richard on a collision course from the moment of that first encounter.
Rusty Barnes doesn't waste any of the potential of this setup. He builds tension all the way through as Richard fights his own youthful timidity, deciding ultimately to do the right thing, to go to battle, to make the dangerous leap from kid to hombre.
A wonderful sense of place, great characters, a satisfying conclusion. Highly recommended.
Then, so quickly, nothing was the same. There was a naked woman – new in town – running out of the woods with ornery Lyle Thompson close behind her, scared out of a tryst by Richard's careless shot at a woodchuck. Later, there was another naked woman, dumped near a stream like an unwanted dog, found by Richard and some new friends, including the fetching but prickly daughter of the first naked woman.
Now there was a riddle to solve, and women and girls to protect. Lyle Thompson was in it up to his neck, which put him and Richard on a collision course from the moment of that first encounter.
Rusty Barnes doesn't waste any of the potential of this setup. He builds tension all the way through as Richard fights his own youthful timidity, deciding ultimately to do the right thing, to go to battle, to make the dangerous leap from kid to hombre.
A wonderful sense of place, great characters, a satisfying conclusion. Highly recommended.
August 26, 2015
RECKONING perfectly captures small-town, poor-town, rural Pennsylvania life as seen through the eyes of Richard, a frustrated (in so many ways) 14-year old almost-a-man boy. But although this is, in part, a coming-of-age story, it is definitely not for young adults. Richard's world becomes perturbed almost immediately by the arrival of a series of naked or nearly-naked women, with that perturbation leading him down a chain of violent events that eventually leave him damaged and that echo throughout the lives of his friends and family. Starts slow, but finishes fast.
January 19, 2015
I've yet to read much from Rusty I didn't enjoy, and this, his first novel, did not disappoint. For anyone who wants to read about hardship with heart. Struggle with triumph. Rusty can see into the human heart as well as any writer I've known. I'm a fan, but seriously give this novel your time and attention. You won't be disappointed either. That's a promise.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews