Prodigals

by Mark Powell

In the late summer of 1944, fifteen-year-old Ernest Cobb flees into the dense forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Behind him, in his South Carolina hometown, the girl he thought he had impregnated is being buried. Her shooting death was not Ernest’s doing, but Ernest fears that he will be implicated in it anyway. With little sense of where he is going or how he might survive, the boy makes his way northward.

Ernest’s journey brings him into the company of outsiders and drifters—an often violent subculture at the tattered fringes of wartime America. An aging mountain hermit, who was once a glassblower, rescues Ernest from the wilderness and nurtures him for a while. Eventually, Ernest finds himself in Asheville, North Carolina, where he goes to work as a dishwasher and rents a dingy room that he soon shares with a new girlfriend. When that relationship falters, Ernest accompanies an amiable but reckless friend, a boy called June Bug, to work at a logging camp. There they meet Jimmy Morgan, a wounded war veteran with his own dark secret. The convergence of these lost souls and their chance discovery of an injured child lead to further tragedy. By the end, the once-naive Ernest has begun to comprehend the gaping loneliness that defines much of human existence, but he has also come to sense the possibility of transcendence in the fleeting connections born of love.
With Prodigals, Mark Powell makes an impressive fiction debut. The author’s keen ear for dialogue, his understanding of character and motive, and his lean, taut language will make this novel linger long in the minds of readers.

Genres: Southern

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Mark Powell is the author of six novels. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, and in 2014 was a Fulbright Fellow to Slovakia. In 2009, he received the Chaffin Award for contributions to Appalachian literature. He holds degrees from Yale Divinity School, the University of South Carolina, and The Citadel. He lives in the mountains of North Carolina, where he teaches at Appalachian State University.

Reviews

[Shelby · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Stars because I loved it

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powell has a very lyrical, poetic style that I enjoyed. The plot was a bit too scattered for me, but Powell's mastery of language kept me reading.

[S.W. Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was intrigued by Powell's well-crafted lyrical style and his poetic voice. The first paragraph took my breath away. I would become one of the Prodigals, if I could learn to write with such beauty and eloquence. Powell proves the dictum that good dialogue requires no tag lines or adverbs. He carefully weaves the different characters and their backstories without stopping the action. The use of present tense gives a sense of immediacy. Unlike the protagonist, Powell's words will not fade with time until they're gone.

[Doug S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tale about the ever-fleeting presence of home and finding your place in the world.

Prodigals is divided into four parts. It takes place in South Carolina and North Carolina in the mid 1940s. The narrative changes perspectives a few times but with our main focus on Ernest (a young man who has run away from home) and at times Jimmy (a man recently returned from the war whose life is falling apart). All the character's stories weave around each other until they ultimately come together for the climax and resolution.

The writing is highly stylized and unlike anything I've really read before. I've seen others call it poetic, but I don't necessarily agree. It's a bit more gritty and feels like the inner workings of someone's mind -a bit vague and imprecise - while still being intimate with the reader.

I did find the structure of the changing narrative a bit hard to follow, especially in the beginning. It's not always obviously which character's viewpoint were in until you get further into each chapter. However, once the stories merge, it does make for a tense and exciting uphill climb to the summit.

A review on the back of the book quotes from one of the last few pages which, although not necessarily a narrative spoiler, does feel a bit of spoiler regarding the tone of the book. I think it would had been best had I not read that before going into this.

Prodigals is Mark Powell's first published book back from 2002. He now has six novels to his name. After reading Prodigals, I am very interested to explore his other works.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A young author with great vision. I loved Prodigals, with its honest treatment of southern life and startlingly clear descriptions. Almost felt like a confessional. Truly worth the read!