One of the conventional ways to approach an author's second novel is with banked expectations.
The reasoning is that the first novel was probably the culmination of decades of consideration and planning, of thinking about characters and story. The first novel was probably rewritten several times — and in fact wasn't a first novel at all, just the first novel to find publication. The first novel might be packed with ideas; the writer might have used up all available intellectual ammunition in getting the story out.
The first novel sets a standard. You worked all these years to get it in the hands of readers. Congratulations, it won some hearts and minds, and maybe an award or two. Now do another. You have eight months.
No wonder the sophomore slump is a thing.
Eli Cranor's "Ozark Dogs" (Soho Crime, $26.95) isn't really a second novel; it may even have been finished before his acclaimed debut "Don't Know Tough." There was a real question as to which of these books to bring out first.
There's no drop-off between the books; recency bias has me liking "Ozark Dogs" better than "DKT," simply because it seems leaner, more tightly focused. But then I look back at the opening graphs of the earlier book, which wasn't the first Cranor I'd ever read but something of a completely different order than the clean, breezy and somewhat modest newspaper columns his former professor Johnny Wink had sent me from time to time.
Cranor has it. A genuine voice. Something you could probably parody. He gets the rhythm and the sense and works on a granular scale to build up stories word by word. He's painting with sand, with pixels. On a molecular level.
GRITTY, SENSATIONAL STUFF
You shouldn't realize this and probably won't, or at least wouldn't if some English Lit type hadn't gone and pulled the wings off the butterfly by pointing it out to you. Because Cranor is writing gritty, sensational stuff. In "Ozark Dogs," the closest thing to a hero is an old Vietnam vet named Jeremiah (what else?) Fitzjurl, who has Chris Kyle-esque sniper skills. He's raising his firecracker teen granddaughter, Jo, whose father, Tommy, is in prison for a very plausible sort of homicide that just didn't quite clear the threshold of the Arkansas "he had it comin'" defense.
Jeremiah wants to keep Jo in the gilded cage that is his fortified junkyard forever. He knows he can't do that, but he can beat her to the mailbox and hide her acceptance letter to the University of Arkansas until he's ready to let her go. He keeps a untapped bottle of whiskey in his pocket — he hasn't broken the seal on that bottle yet, he hasn't taken a drink in a long time, but he's fatalistic as Chekhov. If the bottle's there, it's going to be pulled at.
Rudnick Ledford, the man Tommy killed, had a family too; it consists of meth-woods white supremacists, the sort of ol' boys who'll fall for the old Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord scam every time. Patriarch Bunn (Cranor has a way with names) is a true believer, but I'm not convinced his son Evail isn't acting cynically; he sees the business opportunities afforded by supplying rednecks with a rationale for race hate, and he'll work with Mexicans if they can help boost his bottom line. But Evail has a genuine thirst to avenge his older brother's death. And a nasty plan.
A STARTLING CREATION
Evail is a startling creation — sensitive and probably gay, he talks like a hipster Stephen A. Smith. While he has shaved his head in accordance with skinhead protocols, he disdains tattoos, either because he finds them trashy or because he's trying to preserve his professional viability when the corporate headhunters turn up.
Yet he seems absolutely drawn from life. I feel as though I've met Evail, or at least come across his posts on social media or in the comments section of The Washington Post. His intelligence, coupled with his angry nihilism, makes him all the more dangerous.
Belladonna, Bunn's wife and mother to Evail and Rudnick, is not quite a Stockholm Syndrome hostage, but she does come across as a human being capable of empathy. Again, her name — which suggests a certain placid toxicity — is a sly touch. (The plant Belladonna is also used medicinally; while it's difficult to say exactly what year "Ozark Dogs" is set in, it's just barely possible Belladonna's parents named her after the 1981 Stevie Nicks album.)
Most of the novel plays out over one night, the night of Jo's high school football team's homecoming game. Jo, who has been elected to the court (though she's sanguine about her chance of being elected queen) takes Jeremiah's 1984 jacked-up Chevy Silverado to the game. After the game, she means to consummate her relationship with her quarterback boyfriend Colt Dillard. Like Evail, they have a plan.
SUSPICION AND CONTEMPT
These plans collide, and Jeremiah ends up desperately hunting for his resourceful granddaughter, who Evail intends to trade to a Mexican cartel. He's joined in his quest by Colt, who he regards with suspicion and contempt, while the local sheriff — daughter of the man who put his son Tommy away — tries to keep Evail from taking justice into his own hands.
It's cinematic, and hard to imagine that someone won't eventually try to film it. If they do, they might reduce it to another violent actioner. But Cranor is a subtle writer with lots of ideas — Jo's panties (which end up hanging in some roadside weeds, like a hiker's blaze) are red for a reason. The title comes from the feral mutts that patrol Jeremiah's junkyard, a line of defense so terrible and ungovernable that sometimes the only way to call them off is to shoot them.
It's a bleak vision, but a true enough one. If you squint, you can see the silhouette of Russellville behind Cranor's fictional town of Taggard, and though his violence is relentless you can discern the human logic behind it.
There's something in Cranor's prose that recalls Warren Criswell's night road paintings; Taggard and its surroundings are part of the same Ozark Gothic landscape that accommodates Ray McKinnon's often-overlooked 2004 film "Chrystal." (Another film the book immediately put me in mind of is Jeff Nichols' "Shotgun Stories" from 2007.)
QUICK AND THRILLING
Larry Brown, Harry Crews and Faulkner probably figure in there somewhere, in the twisted roots submerged in the creator's mind, as does Donald Harington's magical naturalism.
It is not an epic novel, just a quick and thrilling read. But there's an iceberg beneath the surface, and a universe that extends beyond the margins of the pages. Cranor is able to convey without condescension the dammed-up desperation of thwarted, impoverished lives out in the sticks, with little more than methamphetamine and sex to relieve the boredom. Because, I imagine, these are his people, for better or worse.
Our people too, I suppose, but Cranor somehow made these particular characters up and blew life into them. Life that's his to take. But maybe even a cruel god loves his subjects.
Email: pmartin@adgnewsroom.com