Hollow Out the Dark

Hollow Out the Dark by author James Wade is yet another example of how this author “paints” his stories with poetic prose. His landscape is the blank page, and oh how he can fill it!

Wade is the only author I’ve read where the storyline is actually second to the telling of it. If you’ve ever read anything by this author, I’m sure you know what I mean.

This story is set in and around the East Texas town of Enoch in 1932. That would put it about fifteen years after the end of World War I, over a decade into the Prohibition era, and several years into the Great Depression. All three of those impact the storyline.

This book is actually two parallel storylines that eventually come together. The first of these tells the path of Jesse Cole, a war hero who came back to find his only brother dead, and then he “did the right thing” and married his brother’s widow to help raise his niece.

The second storyline follows the path of Texas Ranger Amon Atkins. After committing a career-altering act during a traffic stop that resulted in the death of his partner and severe injury to a politician’s son, Amon is sent alone to Enoch to investigate a murder.

Both storylines quickly become entangled in a local bootlegging war, and the casualties are piling up.

“Flares and fires burning in the loud night across black mud fields littered with the hollow vessels of extinguished souls.”

The storylines seem somewhat complex when explaining them, but they don’t seem that way when reading them. Something else I want to mention: I typically have a hard time remembering who characters are if there are more than just a few. This book has about a dozen prominent characters, and I had no trouble remembering each one. I don’t know how Wade pulled that off, but he did well.

The real joy in James Wade novels is not really the story, but the reading. Some folks say it’s not about the destination but the journey. That’s certainly true in these books. I’m a slow reader to begin with, but I read Wade stories even slower so I can savor the words that make the sentences that make the paragraphs that make the chapters that make the story. That is my joy!

As an example, consider the way this author describes headlights being seen in the distance: “Headlights coming down off Harmatia Hill like synchronized souls falling from grace, burning the dark there before them and then gone into the trees, and the curtain of night again drawing shut.” I wouldn’t gush so much about Wade’s writing if that was a one-off. No, the entire book reads like that. I’m not kidding.

When I read one of Wade’s novels, I feel like I’m in the presence of literary brilliance. I’ve often considered how anyone could combine words the way he does to make these passages flow together. But most times I just read and enjoy.

“Dreams are like bones, he thought. You cannot see them, but they are inside of you. They are inside of you until you die and then there is nothing left to hold them.”

—thoughts of Jesse

The pacing is somewhat slow, but I consider that appropriate for the story. The story arcs are quite good; the main characters change significantly during the course of the story. The organization is also quite good, with the chapters somewhat alternating (all in third person narrative) between the two main characters.

Depending on where you read this review, you will likely see a 5-star rating. However, if you read this on my blog, you will note it only has a 4.5-star rating. I want to explain that after all the gushing above. I did not really care for the way the storylines came to a close. I would never have expected that, but that is just my opinion. But the reader is not left hanging, so there is satiety in that.

Despite my picky half-star deduction, this is still an exceptional story. The joy is in the reading. You need to prepare your world to be colored as only James Wade can do.