Title: WHEN THESE MOUNTAINS BURN
Author: DAVID JOY
Genre: FICTION, SOCIAL THEMES, ADDICTION
Length: 272 PAGES
Publisher: G.P. PUTNAM’S SONS – An Imprint of PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Release Date: AUGUST 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53688-8
Price: $27.00 USD / $36.00 CDN
Rating: 5 OUT OF 5 STARS ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
DESCRIPTION:
Acclaimed author and “remarkably gifted storyteller” (The Charlotte Observer) David Joy returns with a fierce and tender tale of a father, an addict, a lawman, and the explosive events that come to unite them.
When his addict son gets in deep with his dealer, it takes everything Raymond Mathis has to bail him out of trouble one last time. Frustrated by the slow pace and limitations of the law, Raymond decides to take matters into his own hands.
After a workplace accident left him out of a job and in pain, Denny Rattler has spent years chasing his next high. He supports his habit through careful theft, following strict rules that keep him under the radar and out of jail. But when faced with opportunities too easy to resist, Denny makes two choices that change everything.
For months, the DEA has been chasing the drug supply in the mountains to no avail, when a lead–just one word–sets one agent on a path to crack the case wide open . . . but he’ll need help from the most unexpected quarter.
As chance brings together these men from different sides of a relentless epidemic, each may come to find that his opportunity for redemption lies with the others.
MY REVIEW:
I had only read a single paragraph and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt that I was going to love this book.
Judge for yourself. Here is Paragraph One of “When These Mountains Burn.”
“Rain bled over the dusty windshield. Raymond Mathis wrung the steering wheel in his fists trying to remember if there was anything left worth taking. The front door of his house stood open and from the driveway he knew who’d broken in. Fact was, if it wasn’t nailed down, it was already gone. What pawned easily went first and now the boy stole anything that looked like it might hold any value at all.”
The boy referenced above is Ray’s son. And, just like thousands, nay, tens of thousands, of young men and women in America today, Ricky is an addict. His father, Ray has spent every dime he has, and then some, paying for rehabs that do nothing, once even paying off a drug dealer so that his son would not have to pay the debt with his life.
But, this is NOT just another book about addiction and the opiate epidemic. It is so much more than that.
The first experience I had with author David Joy was his debut book “Where All Light Tends To Go” which was published in 2015 and I absolutely loved.
David Joy is not only an author, he is an artist, painting with words rather than pastels and oils, but the result is just as vivid.
WHEN THESE MOUNTAINS BURN takes on several social issues including the Opiate Crisis, forest wildfires, and the residual and ongoing effects of colonization on Indigenous Peoples and Communities.
David Joy is somehow able to call into existence characters that feel so real that readers will wonder if they are based on actual people.
David Joy’s gift for conceiving of plausable scenarios makes reading his books a true experience. In particular, David’s books are set in areas that he knows well. This lends a further air of authenticity to When These Mountains Burn.
I can easily imagine the film rights for this book being snatched up rather quickly and I will be first in line to see the movie if this happens.
David’s books are perfect for book clubs and he even offers Discussion Guides on his website.
I rate this book as 5+ out of 5 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
If you have not yet read any of David Joy’s books, you are missing out on a true literary experience.
WHEN THESE MOUNTAINS BURN was released TODAY!!!
**Thank you to the Publisher for providing me with a free copy of this book.**
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Photograph by Alan Rhew
David Joy is the author of the Edgar nominated novel Where All Light Tends To Go (Putnam, 2015), as well as the novels The Weight Of This World (Putnam, 2017) and The Line That Held Us (Putnam, 2018).
He is also the author of the memoir Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman’s Journey (Bright Mountain Books, 2011), which was a finalist for the Reed Environmental Writing Award and the Ragan Old North State Award.
Joy is the recipient of an artist fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council. His latest short stories and essays have appeared in Time, The New York Times Magazine, Garden & Gun, and The Bitter Southerner.
David Joy lives in the North Carolina mountains.
To learn more about this author, visit the following links:
Available for purchase in both Hardcover and Ebook Format:
To Order Hardcovers Click on the links below:
To Order the E-Book:
For La Grande Librairie.
François Busnel recently visited David Joy at his home to film an upcoming episode of La Grande Librairie, a primetime television program covering literature and culture in France. Followed by an average of five to seven hundred thousand viewers weekly, it is considered to be the most influential program on book sales in the country.
Busnel called David Joy, “one of the most promising writers of his generation.”
The episode is scheduled to air in the coming months.
MORE BOOKS
BY DAVID JOY:
Amie's Book Reviews 