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A review by eleellis
Nothing More Dangerous by Allen Eskens
5.0
The novel Nothing More Dangerous by Allen Eskens follows fifteen-year-old Boady Sanden in the Ozark Hills of Missouri during the mid-1970s. America is in the midst of celebrating its 200th anniversary, while young Boady feels little to be found celebratory.
Boady is a freshman at a private school, not by choice, but for punishment and is struggling to make good enough grades for him to avoid summer school. Boady, an obvious isolated outsider within the school, desperately wants to avoid summer school so he can work and save money with plans of leaving town as soon as he can.
Boady lives with his widowed mother on a short, dead-end hollow road with just a few houses. One house is empty, with the one across the gravel road containing a mysterious, disabled man, known to sit on his porch and from time to time, offering Boady words of wisdom. The employer to both Boady and his mother lives in the third house at the end of the hollow road.
One day at school, in an act of kindness toward another student, Boady opens himself up to the violent ire of a group of fellow high school students with an association to a secretive group known as the "CORPS."
As the novel unfolds, more details are revealed about the neighbor across the street and of a new family moving into the empty house along the hollow road.
The story also includes an underlying major plotline that focuses on a missing woman, believed to have embezzled a large sum of money from a local factory before fleeing.
There is more to the novel than in this review and to reveal more would require spoilers.
One thing I enjoyed about this novel is how the writing of Allen Eskens so easily invokes mental imagery of the descriptions within the printed words. Being from the country and river bottoms, clear imagery of sites described in this novel were vividly seen in my mind's eye.
Another thing I enjoyed about this novel was how the author avoided one specific plot path often found in novels of this nature.
This novel is highly recommended to readers. Especially to readers who enjoy Southern writing, novels about friendships and rural tales.
Boady is a freshman at a private school, not by choice, but for punishment and is struggling to make good enough grades for him to avoid summer school. Boady, an obvious isolated outsider within the school, desperately wants to avoid summer school so he can work and save money with plans of leaving town as soon as he can.
Boady lives with his widowed mother on a short, dead-end hollow road with just a few houses. One house is empty, with the one across the gravel road containing a mysterious, disabled man, known to sit on his porch and from time to time, offering Boady words of wisdom. The employer to both Boady and his mother lives in the third house at the end of the hollow road.
One day at school, in an act of kindness toward another student, Boady opens himself up to the violent ire of a group of fellow high school students with an association to a secretive group known as the "CORPS."
As the novel unfolds, more details are revealed about the neighbor across the street and of a new family moving into the empty house along the hollow road.
The story also includes an underlying major plotline that focuses on a missing woman, believed to have embezzled a large sum of money from a local factory before fleeing.
There is more to the novel than in this review and to reveal more would require spoilers.
One thing I enjoyed about this novel is how the writing of Allen Eskens so easily invokes mental imagery of the descriptions within the printed words. Being from the country and river bottoms, clear imagery of sites described in this novel were vividly seen in my mind's eye.
Another thing I enjoyed about this novel was how the author avoided one specific plot path often found in novels of this nature.
This novel is highly recommended to readers. Especially to readers who enjoy Southern writing, novels about friendships and rural tales.