What do you think?
Rate this book
Settle Down
260 pages, Paperback
Published September 16, 2025
1 person is currently reading
7 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 6, 2025
In his new novel Settle Down, Ritt Deitz comes up with a unique take on what is essentially a coming-of-age tale and supernatural mystery rolled into one. At the heart of the narrative is our protagonist, Kenny, a working-class kid with a catering job. It’s the late 1980s, and Kenny is also a student at the University of Virginia. From the outside, Kenny lives a normal life that is as indistinguishable and unremarkable as the life of any other college kid. He enjoys hanging out with his pals, Logan and Wayne, and he tells his friend Tracy how excited he is about graduation. He may feel a bit out of sorts, but what young kid at college for the first time doesn’t?
But odd things start to occur. The first time it happens, Kenny slips into his storyteller mode and starts narrating a tale with the voice of Uncle Remus. Oddly enough, when he enters this mode, both Kenny and the listeners slip into a sort of trance:
Logan, on the other hand, was now fighting just to stay awake. The deep Hollywood-Sambo voice was morphine to him. Wayne’s half-protest acknowledged, Kenny’s performance was now free to do what it had apparently been designed to do in the first place: put Logan softly to sleep.
Weird stuff, followed by more weirdness: a dream visit from Abraham Lincoln and Ken’s father. The two discuss the history of the region, the Shawnee and Cherokee peoples, and in a very funny exchange, Kenny asks why the hell they made him recite that ghastly Uncle Remus Tar Baby story. Apparently, Ken’s father, Harlan, used to use that voice, and feeling threatened, Harlan speaks up: “I’m not prejudiced…”
Lincoln says that he had been directing what happened to Kenny, and that while he would not remember this dream, it would happen again when he was finally “home.”
The third storytelling sequence is even odder. This time, Kenny recounts the tale of Paul Bunyan, but instead, Wayne falls into the trance as the narrator and takes over the storytelling:
“You probably know it,” said Wayne. “I may have told it to you, about the Great Up North. Maybe we were paddlin’ up in the Boundary Waters.” He sounded a little like Laurent. Up in da Boundary Wadders. “It’s the story of big Paul Bunyan, that great lumberjack of the North, who changed everything for us out here in the camps, don’t ya know.” Dole-cha nole.
Yes, apparently Kenny’s powers are transferable.
I love the absurdity, the wit, the playfulness, and the nonsense of these story-trance sessions. It keeps things humming.
Throughout the novel, we get to learn a lot about the importance of heritage, identity, and the role narration and oral history play in our lives, especially insofar as race is concerned. There’s also a nice subplot, the story of Kenny’s relationship with his niece, Taylor, who is sort of his anchor or lodestar.
In the end, Kenny does have a final dream where he meets his father again, as well as the historian Knox Chiffonier, and we do get the feeling that Kenny has grown from the process, has come to understand his identity, American history, and the myth and reality behind issues like race and slavery. Settle Down by Ritt Deitz tackles big questions in an interesting and unique way, and each reader will be able to tease meaning out of the narrative in a different manner, depending on their relationship to both the country and the narrative process itself.
But odd things start to occur. The first time it happens, Kenny slips into his storyteller mode and starts narrating a tale with the voice of Uncle Remus. Oddly enough, when he enters this mode, both Kenny and the listeners slip into a sort of trance:
Logan, on the other hand, was now fighting just to stay awake. The deep Hollywood-Sambo voice was morphine to him. Wayne’s half-protest acknowledged, Kenny’s performance was now free to do what it had apparently been designed to do in the first place: put Logan softly to sleep.
Weird stuff, followed by more weirdness: a dream visit from Abraham Lincoln and Ken’s father. The two discuss the history of the region, the Shawnee and Cherokee peoples, and in a very funny exchange, Kenny asks why the hell they made him recite that ghastly Uncle Remus Tar Baby story. Apparently, Ken’s father, Harlan, used to use that voice, and feeling threatened, Harlan speaks up: “I’m not prejudiced…”
Lincoln says that he had been directing what happened to Kenny, and that while he would not remember this dream, it would happen again when he was finally “home.”
The third storytelling sequence is even odder. This time, Kenny recounts the tale of Paul Bunyan, but instead, Wayne falls into the trance as the narrator and takes over the storytelling:
“You probably know it,” said Wayne. “I may have told it to you, about the Great Up North. Maybe we were paddlin’ up in the Boundary Waters.” He sounded a little like Laurent. Up in da Boundary Wadders. “It’s the story of big Paul Bunyan, that great lumberjack of the North, who changed everything for us out here in the camps, don’t ya know.” Dole-cha nole.
Yes, apparently Kenny’s powers are transferable.
I love the absurdity, the wit, the playfulness, and the nonsense of these story-trance sessions. It keeps things humming.
Throughout the novel, we get to learn a lot about the importance of heritage, identity, and the role narration and oral history play in our lives, especially insofar as race is concerned. There’s also a nice subplot, the story of Kenny’s relationship with his niece, Taylor, who is sort of his anchor or lodestar.
In the end, Kenny does have a final dream where he meets his father again, as well as the historian Knox Chiffonier, and we do get the feeling that Kenny has grown from the process, has come to understand his identity, American history, and the myth and reality behind issues like race and slavery. Settle Down by Ritt Deitz tackles big questions in an interesting and unique way, and each reader will be able to tease meaning out of the narrative in a different manner, depending on their relationship to both the country and the narrative process itself.
September 15, 2025
He Sings the Body Acoustic: Settle Down by Ritt Deitz. Ten Sixteen Press, 2025
The plot of Settle Down, Ritt Deitz’s assured, haunting and hilarious first novel, is focused on Kenny McLuher, a new graduate from college in the South who’s returned to his hometown of Madison, Wisconsin to build a life. Set in the late 1980’s, his progress is intimately linked to the local color of Madison and the verities of family, friendship and community. Like the creation of that other child of Madison, Thornton Wilder, Deitz’s Our Town seems to be conjured in a plain language of timelessness and down-home simplicity that might lull many readers into a comfortable trance, like the ability Kenny sometimes wields-without comprehension or control-to story-tell people and sometimes himself into snoring slumber. (When he actually needs it to put his young niece to sleep it doesn't work). For a writer or artist, the irony and paradox of such a “power” (unpredictably and helplessly-channeling the Walt Disney, Song of the South version of Uncle Remus and The Tar Baby, or the cornpone baritone of Tennessee Ernie Ford, or the reedy Abe Lincoln or, by implication, any effort to make art that might end up inducing drool and stupor instead of enlightenment) is not lost on Deitz, who balances points and counterpoints of ideas and language across the play of ordinary life in a daring formal high wire act. As we are charmed and engaged in the familiar yet always unique complications of post-college love life, friendships and work , a complex structure unfolds of recurrence, coincidence, the fated, disastrous and synchronous that evokes Dickens or John Irving, with a very real red-haired ghost, the bardo of neighborhood bars, 19th century history lessons on street corners and the metaphysics of region and geography (just where is the real South?!) (Deitz has the beat and rhythm of ballads and stories in his bones: he’s a distinctive acoustic guitarist and singer/songwriter with a long career and ten CD’s, often compared to Tom Waits, Bruce Cockburn and Greg Brown). He’s also a French teacher, having taught at the University of Wisconsin since 2000. And as to that hilarity: Deitz’s feeling for dialog, dialect and written sound is another kind of music, made of family codes, children’s neologisms and the conversational shanty songs of friendship and community. This is a warm and welcoming book, but there’s darkness too. Deitz reminds us, like Bruce Cockburn in “Pacing the Cage:”
Sometimes the best maps will not guide you
You can’t see what’s round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
The plot of Settle Down, Ritt Deitz’s assured, haunting and hilarious first novel, is focused on Kenny McLuher, a new graduate from college in the South who’s returned to his hometown of Madison, Wisconsin to build a life. Set in the late 1980’s, his progress is intimately linked to the local color of Madison and the verities of family, friendship and community. Like the creation of that other child of Madison, Thornton Wilder, Deitz’s Our Town seems to be conjured in a plain language of timelessness and down-home simplicity that might lull many readers into a comfortable trance, like the ability Kenny sometimes wields-without comprehension or control-to story-tell people and sometimes himself into snoring slumber. (When he actually needs it to put his young niece to sleep it doesn't work). For a writer or artist, the irony and paradox of such a “power” (unpredictably and helplessly-channeling the Walt Disney, Song of the South version of Uncle Remus and The Tar Baby, or the cornpone baritone of Tennessee Ernie Ford, or the reedy Abe Lincoln or, by implication, any effort to make art that might end up inducing drool and stupor instead of enlightenment) is not lost on Deitz, who balances points and counterpoints of ideas and language across the play of ordinary life in a daring formal high wire act. As we are charmed and engaged in the familiar yet always unique complications of post-college love life, friendships and work , a complex structure unfolds of recurrence, coincidence, the fated, disastrous and synchronous that evokes Dickens or John Irving, with a very real red-haired ghost, the bardo of neighborhood bars, 19th century history lessons on street corners and the metaphysics of region and geography (just where is the real South?!) (Deitz has the beat and rhythm of ballads and stories in his bones: he’s a distinctive acoustic guitarist and singer/songwriter with a long career and ten CD’s, often compared to Tom Waits, Bruce Cockburn and Greg Brown). He’s also a French teacher, having taught at the University of Wisconsin since 2000. And as to that hilarity: Deitz’s feeling for dialog, dialect and written sound is another kind of music, made of family codes, children’s neologisms and the conversational shanty songs of friendship and community. This is a warm and welcoming book, but there’s darkness too. Deitz reminds us, like Bruce Cockburn in “Pacing the Cage:”
Sometimes the best maps will not guide you
You can’t see what’s round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
September 17, 2025
Ritt Deitz’s Settle Down follows Kenny McLuher, a Wisconsin native in his final year at the University of Virginia, as he grapples with the age‑old question: What is home, anyway? Majoring in history with no clear path beyond graduation, Kenny drifts between lecture halls, late‑night catering shifts, and echoes of Southern folktales he shares—sometimes to the bemusement of his co‑workers. Through Kenny’s gentle humor and restless curiosity, Deitz captures that universal limbo of young adulthood, when every choice feels both urgent and uncertain.
The novel’s heart lies in Kenny’s evolving friendships—especially with Laurent, after a chance encounter by the Yahara River. Laurent’s quick wit and unexpected references to Civil War lore are Kenny’s first introduction to him but certainly not the last. Later in the story, Kenny ends up getting a job at Laurent’s small catering company, which plays a rather large part in Kenny’s life (at least the parts we see in this story). Kenny’s chance encounter with a cryptic stranger, hinting at Orion and otherworldly connections, infuses the story with a subtle magic that mirrors the way history itself can feel uncanny and alive.
Deitz’s writing style is unpretentious and warm, guiding us effortlessly between Kenny’s internal monologue and the vivid campus landscape. The University of Virginia emerges as more than a backdrop—it’s a place steeped in myth and memory, where colonial architecture meets the hum of modern student life. Deitz peppers the narrative with historical allusions—Abraham Lincoln’s unfinished stories, John Wilkes Booth’s shadow—and by doing so, reminds us that every brick and bust on Grounds carries a tale waiting to be rediscovered.
At its core, Settle Down is a meditation on belonging. Kenny’s Wisconsin roots tug at him even as he finds unexpected comfort in Charlottesville. In Deitz’s hands, the search for “home” becomes both a physical journey—back and forth between Madison and UVA—and an emotional one, as Kenny learns that sometimes the place you’re meant to “settle down” in is less about geography and more about the people who listen when you tell them a story.
Find my full review here: https://likelystory.blog/2025/09/16/r...
The novel’s heart lies in Kenny’s evolving friendships—especially with Laurent, after a chance encounter by the Yahara River. Laurent’s quick wit and unexpected references to Civil War lore are Kenny’s first introduction to him but certainly not the last. Later in the story, Kenny ends up getting a job at Laurent’s small catering company, which plays a rather large part in Kenny’s life (at least the parts we see in this story). Kenny’s chance encounter with a cryptic stranger, hinting at Orion and otherworldly connections, infuses the story with a subtle magic that mirrors the way history itself can feel uncanny and alive.
Deitz’s writing style is unpretentious and warm, guiding us effortlessly between Kenny’s internal monologue and the vivid campus landscape. The University of Virginia emerges as more than a backdrop—it’s a place steeped in myth and memory, where colonial architecture meets the hum of modern student life. Deitz peppers the narrative with historical allusions—Abraham Lincoln’s unfinished stories, John Wilkes Booth’s shadow—and by doing so, reminds us that every brick and bust on Grounds carries a tale waiting to be rediscovered.
At its core, Settle Down is a meditation on belonging. Kenny’s Wisconsin roots tug at him even as he finds unexpected comfort in Charlottesville. In Deitz’s hands, the search for “home” becomes both a physical journey—back and forth between Madison and UVA—and an emotional one, as Kenny learns that sometimes the place you’re meant to “settle down” in is less about geography and more about the people who listen when you tell them a story.
Find my full review here: https://likelystory.blog/2025/09/16/r...
November 7, 2025
Madisonians may know longtime east sider Ritt Deitz as a core member of the band Isle of Dogs or as a French professor at the University of Wisconsin. Deitz’s debut novel is written with an assured hand as he spins the story of a fresh college grad with Kentucky ancestry (Deitz is from Kentucky himself) who has moved back in with his family in Madison and is trying to understand the meaning of home and place. The backdrop is Madison of the 1980s; landmarks of that era like the Willy Bear and Ray-o-Vac Factory are local morsels for the Madison reader. Delightful flourishes of surrealism — Abraham Lincoln’s ghost and storytelling trances that put listeners to sleep, among others — add rich dimension to this novel that takes its place in a respectable line of Madison novels by the likes of Kelly Cherry, Lorrie Moore, and J. Allen Kirsch.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews