The Hour of Lead: A Novel
The author of the well-regarded Lonesome Animals (2012) returns to Washington State for his second novel, the tale of a primitive, tormented man named Matt Lawson. It begins in the 1920s, when farms were still being wrested out of the sod. In a memorably described blizzard, young Matt loses both his brother and his father, and then must take over the ranch and care for his inconsolable mother. He doesn’t understand love, and his sole courtship, of a grocer’s daughter, Wendy, turns sordid. He’s driven out into the world, where he is unequipped for anything but work. He’s big and strong, able to outwork any man, whether on a farm or in the (beautifully described) building of the Grand Coulee Dam. Eventually, Matt’s simple obsessions return him to Wendy and a sort of happiness. But he’s a dull fellow, and the smarter folks around him are doomed by violence and death wishes. Holbert has been compared to Cormac McCarthy, but really he brings to mind the early John Steinbeck, as in To a God Unknown, with its melodrama and twisted pantheism. --John Mort