The now famous Thomas Wolfe phrase you can’t go home again sits at the heart of Cemetery Road. It’s a thoughtful meditation on friends, family, guilt, memory, loyalty and truth. Given the power of the exploration of these themes maybe I should have capitalized each of them.
In the folly of their youthful impetuousness Handy and his friends commit a crime that has horrible consequences resulting in the loss of life and the breaking up of their fellowship. Handy leave town and becomes a repairman, fixing electronics and appliances, having a natural ability to diagnose and repair machines. But Handy himself is broken in many ways and his skills as a repairman fail to serve him well with his own self. This sense that something is amiss and the need to fix it lies at the heart of his investigation into the suspicious death of one of his friends. The pull of redemption for the acts committed years ago is so great that it provides the drive for the investigation. This is a man who wants to be saved or is willing to die trying. Which if you think about it is a really interesting kind of desperation.
Handy is a brilliantly conceived character with a broken heart that aches with humanity. The crime from their past is genuinely horrific and the reader feels the burden that Handy carries with him when the fullness of it is revealed.
Cemetery Road is a contender for one of the best books I’ve read this year.
One of the best I’ve read this year, too!