~Post by Scott Montgomery, MysteryPeople Crime Fiction Coordinator
With Joe Lansdale coming to the store tonight to read from and sign Edge of Dark Water, I wanted to get caught up with his sceond to last book, All The Earth, Thrown To The Sky. Considered a young adult title, he creates a world as dark and tough as in any of his other books.
It works well as a companion piece to, Edge Of Dark Water (which I reviewed last month on the MysteryPeople blog), since both deal with teens jouneying through The Great Depression. All The Earth, Thrown To The Sky starts out even bleaker with our hero Jack, an Okie farmboy, pushing his dead parents into a hole in the ground. His mother died of sickness and his father committed suicide immediately afterwards. The farm is in a useless part of the Dust Bowl and the bank’s about to take it. Jack has no options. Then one comes in the form of two other orphans, Jane and Tony Lewis. They have a scheme to to steal the car of a dead and formerly cranky neighbor and make their way to East Texas where Jane says they might have relations. Since Jack is the only one who can drive, he joins in.
Lansdale doesn’t sugar coat the journey or the era it takes place in. The dust storms cover everything in dirt, even indoors, and blow sand into the skin with rough force. Large swarms of grasshoppers roam about like something out of a horror novel. Jack and the Lewis kids get kidnapped by two bankrobbers, Bad Tiger and Tony, who kill their wounded partner without batting an eye. The two criminals are on their way to Tyler, Texas to find their other accomplice, a carnival wrestler known as The Strangler. It seems The Strangler took all their loot to pay for his daughter’s foot operation and the two hoods want the cash back as well as his life. After Jack, Jane, and Tony escape, they decide to get to The Strangler and warn him. It puts them on the road and rails, running across, hobos, crooked lawman, gangsters, kind widows, a black man living in the woods away from racism, and even Pretty Boy Floyd, not knowing if they are friends at first meeting.
Lansdale tempers the harshness with humor. The kids’ deadpan reaction to all the misery is believable for the time as well as funny in their dialogue. He creates a great relationship in Jack and Jane that usually leaves the boy flustered. One of my favorite exchanges is when after a particularly grueling moment Jane accuses Jack of having no sense of adventure and he replies, “Who says I had to bring one.”
All The Earth, Thrown To The Sky is a very grown up young adult book. The violence is sudden and the humor can be black. even though the characters are complex with fates as unresolved as real life. Whatever the age of the reader picking up this book, he or she will be treated like an adult.
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Joe Lansdale will be here at BookPeople tonight, Thursday April 5 7p, to speak about and sign copies of Edge of Dark Water. He will be joined by his daughter, musician Kasey Lansdale, who will perform songs, including a song inspired by this book.
If crime fiction is your thing, be sure to visit the MysteryPeople blog where Scott and other booksellers post regular reviews, author Q&A’s, and other chatter about the genre.
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