North Carolina writer David Joy continues to build an impressive body of fiction that explores the underbelly of the insular, clannish culture of Appalachia through the actions of criminal, violent men.
But “Those We Thought We Knew” (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, $28) is a refreshing departure from what we’ve come to expect from Appalachian noir. His captivating new novel is still set in the mountains, contains plenty of criminal activity and a fair amount of violence. But it also opens itself up to the bigger world and shows us how even a small, remote, homogenous town like Sylva, North Carolina, is not immune to the societal shifts that sweep the nation.
Equally significant, in a genre primarily populated by white men, it gives us fully fleshed out Black female characters who are complex and integral to the story.
Sheriff John Coggins is a white man who considers himself one of the good guys. He is confident his stance on racial equity is apparent by the mantle of benevolent colorblindness he proudly wears. After all, his closest friend and hunting buddy had been a Black man, the late Lonnie Jones.
But then Lonnie’s granddaughter Toya, an artist from Atlanta, comes to town for the summer to research her roots and work on an art project for her MFA thesis. Like a lot of 24-year-old students, Toya is also an activist. Before long, her artwork and acts of protest stir up racial tensions that simmer just below Sylva’s surface.
Suddenly, Coggins no longer recognizes the place he calls home.
“I just don’t know what in the world’s got into all these people,” he tells Lonnie’s widow, Vess.
“Same thing’s always been in them, I reckon,” she says.
Joy has a knack for heightening intrigue by introducing a lot of characters but playing coy with which one is the protagonist. Some characters are given center stage then recede into the background, while others aren’t introduced until midway through and figure prominently until the end. He’s like a magician playing a shell game, and it’s an effective way to keep readers on their toes.
Credit: Penguin Random House
Credit: Penguin Random House
The first half of the book chronicles the slow but steady buildup of racial tension in Sylva. The second half begins with two violent crimes — a murder and a near fatal beating. There’s nothing to indicate the crimes are related, but unanswered questions remain. Sheriff Coggins is tasked with solving the assault, while the murder is assigned to Det. Leah Green, who is working her first homicide.
Solving the mysteries is the engine that drives the rest of the book, but there’s something else equally urgent at stake here — the town’s reckoning with its covert racism. In the end, this book is as much a how-did-we-get-here as it is a whodunit.
In Joy’s capable hands, Sylva serves as a microcosm of the U.S. as its townspeople grapple with the same issues the nation confronted when the Black Lives Matter movement surfaced in 2020. Sheriff Coggins and Det. Green are stand-ins for the vast numbers of white folks who mistakenly believed racial equality had long been achieved. They are shocked to learn their Black friends and neighbors encounter blatant and subtle acts of racism on the regular.
All the hot-button topics are represented: racially motivated violence, the Confederate flag, Confederate statues, microaggression, white privilege, protests, the KKK. But Joy masterfully weaves them into the story, organically presenting various perspectives from a myriad of characters. And while the difference between right and wrong is clearly delineated, the reader never feels schooled on the issues.
The book is filled with gorgeous prose, particularly when Joy turns his considerable talents toward descriptions of the natural world, and it’s populated with memorable characters, like the guy who eats groundhog sandwiches and the one who sleeps in the cab of his truck because a snake moved into his house.
The resolution of the murder is particularly gutting, and it’s clear by the end of the book that much work has to be done to achieve racial equality in Sylva, but there is a ray of hope. Sheriff’s deputy Ernie Allison speaks for many when he says, “I guess there comes a moment when you start realizing that keeping your mouth shut’s the same thing as nodding your head.”
Suzanne Van Atten is a book critic and contributing editor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She can be reached at svanatten@ajc.com.
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