The Evening Hour: A Novel
In Sickels’ sparkling debut, the inhabitants of Dove Creek, West Virginia, often speak of leaving but for complicated reasons can’t or won’t. Twenty-seven-year-old Cole Freeman tried leaving once but guiltily returned to help care for his aging grandfather, formerly a fiery Baptist minister, now an asocial prude. Because Cole was raised by his grandparents, he must respect their stubborn desire to remain in Dove Creek despite the coal company’s offer to purchase their land, not to mention the recurrent earth-shattering explosions reminding them of the imminent dangers of coal-borne cancer. To support himself and his grandparents, Cole works as an aide in a nursing home, where he steals his patients’ money and prescription pills to sell to others. As he dreams of eventually leaving town for good, his friends seem to be drifting away emotionally, leaving him feeling more isolated than ever before. Sickels’ measured prose underscores the eeriness of a contradiction-riddled town plagued by boredom, sickness, and poverty in a powerful story of one man’s effort to help others when no one is able to help him. --Jonathan Fullmer