THE GREEN AGE OF ASHER WITHEROW

Life and death among Welsh immigrant coalminers in 19th-century California.

In an awkward weave, first-novelist Cunningham, a two-time Pushcart nominee for his short fiction, incorporates an early coming-of-age story with the scapegoating of an unorthodox seminarian. Narrator Asher Witherow is born in 1863 of Welsh parents in Nortonville, California, a mining town. The influence of the old country is strong: Welsh legends abound, coexisting with fervent religious beliefs. Asher’s father, David, is resigned to life as a miner (“we endure”), while his mother, Abicca, is the militant one. At seven, Asher begins 12-hour days at the pit head, with school at night; by age nine, he’s underground, soon working alongside his father. Death is never far away. Asher’s playmate Thomas accidentally burns to death in an abandoned mine. Even though he saw it happen, Asher denies all knowledge and is crippled by guilt. Josiah Lyte, seminarian and Asher’s teacher, is to be unfairly implicated by the narrow-minded townspeople. Josiah knows that Asher is a prodigy, and the two have quickly bonded. Josiah, the best character here, is the son of missionaries in India, and he embraces Hindu deities and Buddha as well as Christ. His pantheism resonates strongly with the young Asher, who is as advanced physically as he is spiritually—and before he’s 12, he has impregnated his little girlfriend Anna (“Our bodies had stepped over without us”). Fire burns again, this time as metaphor for the sexual union. Too frail to sustain a pregnancy, Anna consents to an abortion, but then she too dies in a fire. Next, Asher’s mother dies, and Josiah (present at Anna’s abortion) is run out of town. Such events are all shoehorned into the final third of a poorly paced novel that strives mightily to find the right language for the elemental Lawrentian urges at work, though too often the result is bombast.

Disjointed material and unmatured style make for some rough sledding.