David Joy’s debut novel deals with eighteen-year-old Jacob McNeely whose father runs a local meth ring. When Jacob botches a murder, he is torn between appeasing his kingpin father and leaving the mountains with the girl he loves. The area surrounding Cashiers, North Carolina is home to people of all kinds, but the world that Jacob lives in is crueler than most. Having dropped out of high school, subsequently cutting himself off from his peers, Jacob has been working for his father for years, all on the promise that his payday will come eventually. The only joy he finds comes from reuniting with Maggie, his first love, and a girl clearly bound for bigger and better things than their hardscrabble town. The world that Jacob inhabits is bleak and unrelenting in its violence and disregard for human life, and having known nothing more, Jacob wonders if he can muster the strength to rise above it. This novel is already drawing comparisons to Winter’s Bone, “Breaking Bad,” “Sons of Anarchy” and “Justified.”
