BONE DOGS

A third Appalachian tale from Maryland resident Skipper (Tear Down the Mountain, 2006, etc.) finds Tuesday Price—equal parts modern-day Huck Finn and Huck Finn’s drunk dad—struggling to escape the cruel snares of alcoholism and a guilt-ridden past.

Price’s wife Linda was with him on that winding mountain road the night the body of his best friend Matt turned up run-over. Price, drunk, had fought with Matt earlier that night. Despite suspicious circumstances, evidence can’t be found to convict Price, but the tragedy sets off a series of accusations that lead to his preacher father’s being let go from the church and, as Price sees it, his death. When Linda leaves him, the loop of his self-pitying existence shrinks to include little more than Ace’s Hole in the Wall Bar and his double-wide trailor. Enter Lilo, a silent old man stoically sitting out his days in a derelict pickup. When Lilo dies, Price discovers a dog chained behind the trailer, echoing the demise of Price’s childhood pet after the disappearance of his depressive mother, an act of deliberate negligence and cruelty he cannot forgive. Apparitions of Lilo and the dead dog haunt Price as he tries to quit his boozing. Despite visits from old drinking buddies and the skunk-like taint of failure, Linda’s pregnancy gives him the will-power to sober up and keep a job. Price is a runner, literally and figuratively, but run as he might on these coal-veined mountains, he can’t outrun his mistakes. Soon enough he loses his job and goes back on the sauce, bottoming out when the facts and mysteries of his past pursue him to his abandoned childhood home where, tormented by naysaying demons, he obsessively labors to rebuild his parents’ home. His only company a fallen preacher, a fire-brand old lady and a blind dog, Price hammers, saws, planes and plumbs his way toward penitence and forgiveness, discovering the truths and misinterpretations that have turned him again and again to the bottle. Will this flawed and frustrated narrator quell his pig-headed and self-destructive tendencies and win back the woman who loves him and carries his child? In pithy mountain vernacular, Price narrates a personal history written in the disappearing ink of whiskey. Vivid, caustic observations and an ear for dialogue breathe life into Skipper’s characters, making them worthy of our sympathy.

With wit, impressive description and resonance to the commonalities of the human condition, this chronicle of a man struggling with himself holds interest even when the action slows and closes on the repeated missteps of a self-described sinner.