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North Dixie Highway: A Novel
Weaving multiple storylines with vivid description of characters, Haske’s debut novel brings new life and a unique voice to the fiction of rural America. North Dixie Highway is a story of family bonds, devolution, and elusive revenge.
When Buck Metzger’s childhood is interrupted by the disappearance of his grandfather, several family members and close friends plot revenge on the suspected killer. From remote towns in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, to the Texas/Mexico border, to war-torn Bosnia, Metzger struggles for self-identity and resolution in a world of blue-collar ethics and liquor-fueled violence.
When Buck Metzger’s childhood is interrupted by the disappearance of his grandfather, several family members and close friends plot revenge on the suspected killer. From remote towns in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, to the Texas/Mexico border, to war-torn Bosnia, Metzger struggles for self-identity and resolution in a world of blue-collar ethics and liquor-fueled violence.
- GenresFiction
188 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 15, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
October 11, 2013
A TOP SHELF review, originally published in the October 10, 2013 edition of The Monitor
Joseph D. Haske, chair of the Department of English at South Texas College, has spent the last decade establishing a solid reputation as an important man of letters in the Valley, crafting powerful stories and promoting the work of promising writers in his many editorial roles.
Haske’s first novel, North Dixie Highway, clinches that reputation. The narrative centers around three time periods in the life of William “Buck” Metzger: 1983, when Buck is just 13; 10 years later, when he is an Army sergeant in Bosnia; and the months immediately after his return from his military stint.
A native of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Buck has been raised by hard men and women for whom drink and violence are natural counterpoints to the hardscrabble existence they eke out from an indifferent world.
When Buck’s grandfather goes missing on a hunting trip in Canada with a long-time rival, the family suspects foul play and vows revenge. But this festering feud warps Buck’s existence, and the chance that he might escape his static, unforgiving destiny through college or some other route dwindles as the family’s attempts at vengeance backfire, unraveling its tight, loyal weft.
When all hope of killing the man responsible for his grandfather’s death evaporates at last, Buck finds himself further and further unmoored from life, until he finally discovers a way to curb his need for vengeance and then sets out on the Dixie Highway in search of his future.
Haske’s prose is supple and sure, lyrical when it needs to be, lean and dark to match the country and characters he so convincingly details. His ear for dialogue is spot-on, and the voices of a range of characters — poor Michiganders, grunts in Bosnia, a prostitute in Reynosa — ring authentic.
The author has opted to weave the three time periods in and out of each other, and the effect is startlingly rich: readers are privy to the havoc revenge that will wreak in Metzger’s life, so they watch events build inexorably, as in some ancient tragedy.
Much like Daniel Woodrell’s 2006 Winter’s Bone, this novel also serves as a portrait of a community at the fringes of society. The rural folk of Michigan’s U.P. are wary of outsiders, but deeply loyal to one another, especial family, and their drunken, violent ways only slightly mask the beating of truly human hearts.
Joseph D. Haske, chair of the Department of English at South Texas College, has spent the last decade establishing a solid reputation as an important man of letters in the Valley, crafting powerful stories and promoting the work of promising writers in his many editorial roles.
Haske’s first novel, North Dixie Highway, clinches that reputation. The narrative centers around three time periods in the life of William “Buck” Metzger: 1983, when Buck is just 13; 10 years later, when he is an Army sergeant in Bosnia; and the months immediately after his return from his military stint.
A native of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Buck has been raised by hard men and women for whom drink and violence are natural counterpoints to the hardscrabble existence they eke out from an indifferent world.
When Buck’s grandfather goes missing on a hunting trip in Canada with a long-time rival, the family suspects foul play and vows revenge. But this festering feud warps Buck’s existence, and the chance that he might escape his static, unforgiving destiny through college or some other route dwindles as the family’s attempts at vengeance backfire, unraveling its tight, loyal weft.
When all hope of killing the man responsible for his grandfather’s death evaporates at last, Buck finds himself further and further unmoored from life, until he finally discovers a way to curb his need for vengeance and then sets out on the Dixie Highway in search of his future.
Haske’s prose is supple and sure, lyrical when it needs to be, lean and dark to match the country and characters he so convincingly details. His ear for dialogue is spot-on, and the voices of a range of characters — poor Michiganders, grunts in Bosnia, a prostitute in Reynosa — ring authentic.
The author has opted to weave the three time periods in and out of each other, and the effect is startlingly rich: readers are privy to the havoc revenge that will wreak in Metzger’s life, so they watch events build inexorably, as in some ancient tragedy.
Much like Daniel Woodrell’s 2006 Winter’s Bone, this novel also serves as a portrait of a community at the fringes of society. The rural folk of Michigan’s U.P. are wary of outsiders, but deeply loyal to one another, especial family, and their drunken, violent ways only slightly mask the beating of truly human hearts.
July 19, 2017
In full-disclosure, I'm related to the author through my husband's family. We bought the book as soon as it was published, but I didn't read it right away. The timing of books I've read recently made me appreciate Joe's writing even more. I finished Stephen's King "On Writing" last month. That book gave me a deeper appreciation for dialog. I thought the dialog in this book was really well done.
The movement between life in a poor, rural area and a soldier's life in a foreign country provided a depth of meaning between the stories in both settings. There are themes of family, violence, revenge, and honor. It reminded me of the modern American literature pieces I read as an English major in college. It was dark and tragic.
As a reader, I'm always looking for redemption. I didn't find that here. It ended on a bleak note.
The movement between life in a poor, rural area and a soldier's life in a foreign country provided a depth of meaning between the stories in both settings. There are themes of family, violence, revenge, and honor. It reminded me of the modern American literature pieces I read as an English major in college. It was dark and tragic.
As a reader, I'm always looking for redemption. I didn't find that here. It ended on a bleak note.
October 3, 2018
A prologue explains that no single “Dixie Highway” exists, but instead the term applies to roads south that reach as far north as Canada. Haske’s story lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Publisher Texas Review Press offers, in part: “Weaving multiple storylines with vivid description of characters and landscape, Haske’s debut novel brings new life and a unique voice to the fiction of rural America. North Dixie Highway is a story of family bonds, devolution, and elusive revenge.”
Author reviewer Larry Fondation adds (in an Amazon editorial review) “It may be fueled by alcohol and anger, but it’s based on love and loyalty: avenging the dead, defending the living.” Definitely fueled by alcohol and anger, I would say—all characters, from grandmothers to 12-year-old boys, are drunk or drinking—and the “love and loyalty” aren’t the stuff about which Hallmark cards are written, rather the stuff that leads to Bosnian wars, in part Haske’s purpose, I suspect, as the author juxtaposes the protagonist’s life as a “peacekeeper,” assassinating at long-range a lone insurrectionist, against his life before and after military duty, including, as a boy, shooting his first bear cub between the eyes.
Reviewer Fondation continues: “Few writers today chronicle the landscape of the static poor—those who do dead-end work with no way out—particularly in a rural setting…Haske joins those ranks.” Earlier I featured here, on Late Last Night Books, Ron Cooper’s Purple Jesus, another book about the rural poor. While Purple Jesus is tragicomic and brings to mind Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” North Dixie Highway “echoes Hemmingway and Faulkner,” in the opinion of one Amazon customer reviewer with whom I agree.
The book features both protagonist Buck’s military time and the home life in which he hunts and fishes and slaughters chickens and turkeys. More scenes are outdoors than in. Northern Michigan is cold. About a fishing night: “Must be five in the morning now and I’m starving. The venison sandwiches and can of brown beans we had are long gone now. There’s a part of me that keeps thinking any minute the Colonel’s Lincoln’s gonna turn down the path to find our spot on the river. Colonel Henry will light his cigar, take off that beaver-skin hat and scratch his head while he tells me in Tennessee drawl to help Grandma with the food in the backseat. Their dinner leftovers will warm my hands through the foil Grandma wrapped around the plates and I’ll feel that hot air from inside the car, just before it slips out into the dark morning frost and my face will remember what it felt like to not be outside, to not be here.”
Blame all the drinking on the extreme cold or the relative poverty or a culture and era where sons imitate dads who encourage “manly” vices in them: “Jack’s got a good buzz, but Dad keeps a straight face for all that beer they drank. At the cantina, he gave me a half a bottle of Dos Equis and said, ‘That’s enough for you. Don’t tell your mother about that cigarette I let you smoke either.’”
Fathers kick sons out, too. When Buck’s a young man: “I’ve got a bad case of the spleen. That’s some old fashion talk Colonel Henry uses—says it means you’re so pissed off there’s hardly a cure but to let loose—go all out on somebody or something. I’m trying to keep my shit together though cause Dad says I can stay at home, long as I do my part and act like family—don’t go apeshit. Whiskey’s always good to take the edge off, so I stop by the only gas station left in town that has a liquor license, Torrio’s. Normally I’d buy a fifth but I pick-up a half gallon of Kessler’s, to share with the family. If I keep it together this time, I get a second chance—warm bed, shower, food—time to save up for college. No more living in my car. Jobs are hard to come by these days…”
The jobs these men have, when they can get one, aren’t behind desks: “See that cement there,” says Dad. “There’s a body in there…Mason fell in when they were pouring…Nothing they could do but keep on pouring.”
The local success story could be a microcosm of moneyed-interests in current American politics: “The hardware store was making good money so he bought all kind of friends. Even though he was a weasel and a rat-faced momma’s boy, he got popular in some circles, long as he was buying.”
And do you ever watch the Weather Channel and wonder why people are thanking God after he blew away their house with a tornado? “‘What kind of deity kills children and ruins the life of a nine-year-old-boy?’ he asked Ray. Henry and five of his brothers fell in the shaft but only three made it out. ‘What the hell kind a faith a boy have in a god that cruel?’”
The central plot issue in North Dixie Highway is revenge in a feud between two families. When a sniper is needed in Bosnia, Buck’s military superiors turn to him because of his game-hunting experience. At home, his father says: “It’s one thing to kill on the battlefield, another to do it domestic. Most of life is a poker game, son. Not a crap shoot.” Note that his father is talking about not getting caught. And of one failed revenge attempt (I’ll let you guess whether the narrator is speaking here): “I fucked it up. I closed my eyes when I went for the shot. I tried to think of a fourteen point buck like you said. Couldn’t get over he was a man.”
North Dixie Highway is a book for literary fiction readers who want to venture into waters that are foreign to most of us. I grew up in the genteel suburbs of booming, post-War LA. I do, however, remember visiting my uncle and aunt in Dearborn, Michigan and watching her drink a beer while she fried eggs for breakfast. And in my family the story was that my great grandfather, in the mountains of Kentucky, was mortally shot while horseback, the victim of a feud between two families.
My favorite line in North Dixie Highway: “‘Let’s get a beer,’ says Dad. ‘We need to work this out with clear heads.’”
Author reviewer Larry Fondation adds (in an Amazon editorial review) “It may be fueled by alcohol and anger, but it’s based on love and loyalty: avenging the dead, defending the living.” Definitely fueled by alcohol and anger, I would say—all characters, from grandmothers to 12-year-old boys, are drunk or drinking—and the “love and loyalty” aren’t the stuff about which Hallmark cards are written, rather the stuff that leads to Bosnian wars, in part Haske’s purpose, I suspect, as the author juxtaposes the protagonist’s life as a “peacekeeper,” assassinating at long-range a lone insurrectionist, against his life before and after military duty, including, as a boy, shooting his first bear cub between the eyes.
Reviewer Fondation continues: “Few writers today chronicle the landscape of the static poor—those who do dead-end work with no way out—particularly in a rural setting…Haske joins those ranks.” Earlier I featured here, on Late Last Night Books, Ron Cooper’s Purple Jesus, another book about the rural poor. While Purple Jesus is tragicomic and brings to mind Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” North Dixie Highway “echoes Hemmingway and Faulkner,” in the opinion of one Amazon customer reviewer with whom I agree.
The book features both protagonist Buck’s military time and the home life in which he hunts and fishes and slaughters chickens and turkeys. More scenes are outdoors than in. Northern Michigan is cold. About a fishing night: “Must be five in the morning now and I’m starving. The venison sandwiches and can of brown beans we had are long gone now. There’s a part of me that keeps thinking any minute the Colonel’s Lincoln’s gonna turn down the path to find our spot on the river. Colonel Henry will light his cigar, take off that beaver-skin hat and scratch his head while he tells me in Tennessee drawl to help Grandma with the food in the backseat. Their dinner leftovers will warm my hands through the foil Grandma wrapped around the plates and I’ll feel that hot air from inside the car, just before it slips out into the dark morning frost and my face will remember what it felt like to not be outside, to not be here.”
Blame all the drinking on the extreme cold or the relative poverty or a culture and era where sons imitate dads who encourage “manly” vices in them: “Jack’s got a good buzz, but Dad keeps a straight face for all that beer they drank. At the cantina, he gave me a half a bottle of Dos Equis and said, ‘That’s enough for you. Don’t tell your mother about that cigarette I let you smoke either.’”
Fathers kick sons out, too. When Buck’s a young man: “I’ve got a bad case of the spleen. That’s some old fashion talk Colonel Henry uses—says it means you’re so pissed off there’s hardly a cure but to let loose—go all out on somebody or something. I’m trying to keep my shit together though cause Dad says I can stay at home, long as I do my part and act like family—don’t go apeshit. Whiskey’s always good to take the edge off, so I stop by the only gas station left in town that has a liquor license, Torrio’s. Normally I’d buy a fifth but I pick-up a half gallon of Kessler’s, to share with the family. If I keep it together this time, I get a second chance—warm bed, shower, food—time to save up for college. No more living in my car. Jobs are hard to come by these days…”
The jobs these men have, when they can get one, aren’t behind desks: “See that cement there,” says Dad. “There’s a body in there…Mason fell in when they were pouring…Nothing they could do but keep on pouring.”
The local success story could be a microcosm of moneyed-interests in current American politics: “The hardware store was making good money so he bought all kind of friends. Even though he was a weasel and a rat-faced momma’s boy, he got popular in some circles, long as he was buying.”
And do you ever watch the Weather Channel and wonder why people are thanking God after he blew away their house with a tornado? “‘What kind of deity kills children and ruins the life of a nine-year-old-boy?’ he asked Ray. Henry and five of his brothers fell in the shaft but only three made it out. ‘What the hell kind a faith a boy have in a god that cruel?’”
The central plot issue in North Dixie Highway is revenge in a feud between two families. When a sniper is needed in Bosnia, Buck’s military superiors turn to him because of his game-hunting experience. At home, his father says: “It’s one thing to kill on the battlefield, another to do it domestic. Most of life is a poker game, son. Not a crap shoot.” Note that his father is talking about not getting caught. And of one failed revenge attempt (I’ll let you guess whether the narrator is speaking here): “I fucked it up. I closed my eyes when I went for the shot. I tried to think of a fourteen point buck like you said. Couldn’t get over he was a man.”
North Dixie Highway is a book for literary fiction readers who want to venture into waters that are foreign to most of us. I grew up in the genteel suburbs of booming, post-War LA. I do, however, remember visiting my uncle and aunt in Dearborn, Michigan and watching her drink a beer while she fried eggs for breakfast. And in my family the story was that my great grandfather, in the mountains of Kentucky, was mortally shot while horseback, the victim of a feud between two families.
My favorite line in North Dixie Highway: “‘Let’s get a beer,’ says Dad. ‘We need to work this out with clear heads.’”
April 4, 2020
Set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, this is a well written tale of hard living, hard drinking families and old-school revenge. The characters are believable, the writing descriptive and the dialogue skillfully done. I found this novel after reading a short story by this author and was glad I sought it out. My only quibble is that the book chapters alternate between time periods and, while I find this distracting, that’s really more of a personal reading issue.
January 14, 2023
This novel was a slow burn for me that took a while to catch, but when it did, I couldn’t stop reading. I was looking for any excuse to sneak away and read (not an easy feat with a 4 month old). The structure of this novel is disorienting and was initially off-putting for me—this is a complicated story with many characters—but when the threads came together, wow. A compelling read full of beautiful imagery, natural and interesting diction, and violent, tragic storytelling.
December 4, 2017
This book is the author's first novel, and I really liked it. Set in rural Michigan, the tone of the book is slower, and makes you really think about family, loyalty, and the ties that bind. Revenge is complicated, and the answer is not always what you are looking for.
A solid book, I would recommend to those looking for characters that are real, and well developed.
A solid book, I would recommend to those looking for characters that are real, and well developed.
June 9, 2014
I picked this up because I knew that the eastern UP was one of the settings. I grew up there and love reading about it. Sometimes authors use the area as a setting but get all the details wrong like paying the toll on your way north across the bridge. I put a book down after reading that. Not so with this book. The sense of place and the portrayal of life there was spot on. I really enjoyed the story and the writing.
A couple of my favorite quotes:
"Ever wonder why the Mackinaw is spelled with a 'w' in Mackinaw City and every time you see Mackinac on the other side of the bridge, it's spelled with a 'c'?" "It's so the Buckeyes, Fudgies, and Trolls learn how to say it right before they cross the bridge."
And in response to a question about not being interested in going downstate, "You get down there, they don't even put the U.P. on the map. Nothing but the fuckin' mitt. They can keep all that--everything under the bridge. Fine with me if I never cross the Straits the rest of my life."
A couple of my favorite quotes:
"Ever wonder why the Mackinaw is spelled with a 'w' in Mackinaw City and every time you see Mackinac on the other side of the bridge, it's spelled with a 'c'?" "It's so the Buckeyes, Fudgies, and Trolls learn how to say it right before they cross the bridge."
And in response to a question about not being interested in going downstate, "You get down there, they don't even put the U.P. on the map. Nothing but the fuckin' mitt. They can keep all that--everything under the bridge. Fine with me if I never cross the Straits the rest of my life."
March 27, 2014
Deep into this novel, Colonel Henry says, "Those're stains of kin. Yessir--the binding stains of kin." Family and one's loyalty to it are central to Haske's characters, hard-drinking residents of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, not terribly well-educated and with fairly sharp limits to their future prospects. The plot pings back and forth between the mid-'80s when the narrator Buck is about 13 and the mid-'90s when he is finishing up his military commitment as a peacekeeper in Bosnia and then returning home. The Metzger family harks back, in many ways, to the 19th century frontier, when law enforcement was scarce and citizens often took the law into their own hands, though Buck's sometimes fractured narration reflects the PTSD of his time in a war zone. Powerfully drawn and often heartbreakingly incapable of not ruining things for themselves, these are people who struggle all their lives, without ever giving up.
May 12, 2014
Joseph Haske's writing is not just good. It is superb. I initially pegged his Dixie Highway as a literary gem with high quality prose and not much else. The opening is not as quick or accessible as most of Steve Hamilton's Alex McKnight yarns, which are also set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Haske's novel is populated with hard drinking violent characters steeped in family honor and obligations as they scrape out a precarious living in one of the nation's least known areas of white poverty. I grew up in the U.P., and knew people like those who are the focus of Haske's excellent first novel. A relatively slim 186 pages, Dixie Highway nevertheless has a complex structure and a careful plot about a modern day family feud. The central character, Buck Metzger wants revenge for the killing of his grandfather. The story unfolds along two distinct timelines separated by a decade and builds to a conclusion that caught me by surprise.
I highly recommend North Dixie Highway.
I highly recommend North Dixie Highway.
June 23, 2014
A layered look at revenge and the deep ties of blood and family, this novel is set largely in the rugged remote landscape of the Eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Much of the novel explores a feud between two local families, which echoes across several generations. But this book is most notable for the unique voice of its narrator, Buck Metzger, a precociously intelligent boy who grows up in a family of hard-drinking smelt-fishers and bear hunters. Written in lyrical language and populated with characters of depth and realism, this is a novel filled with pathos and humor, violence and revenge. All in all, it's an engaging and masterfully written story that captures a disappearing way of life. I'm looking forward to the next effort from Joseph D. Haske, for sure.
December 30, 2013
Won from Goodreads.com -
first thing I thought as I started reading this book was that these people were very similar to people I had known down south. Then, as I got further into the story, I started understanding and really feeling for these characters. I regret not knowing what happened to Buck. This is a very creative and well-written novel.
first thing I thought as I started reading this book was that these people were very similar to people I had known down south. Then, as I got further into the story, I started understanding and really feeling for these characters. I regret not knowing what happened to Buck. This is a very creative and well-written novel.
June 10, 2021
Haske is a modern master. A family saga of working class and honor, Haske here places himself amongst the great contemporary writers of our time. He is truly one of the finest writers alive. I will give an in depth review of this modern classic in a short period. Check it out. You will not regret it.
November 15, 2013
I am impressed with the quality of the writing. This author is better at his craft than so many I read. I'm looking forward to more from him.
December 7, 2013
It was amazing.
March 21, 2014
Very hard to get through. The only reason I read it was because it was a book club choice. Ugg!!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews