To the Bones

THE BOOK: To the Bones.

PUBLISHED IN: 2019.

THE AUTHOR: Valerie Nieman.

THE EDITOR: Abby Freeland.

THE PUBLISHER: West Virginia University Press.

SUMMARY: Darrick MacBrehon, a government auditor, wakes among the dead. Bloodied and disoriented from a gaping head wound, the man who staggers out of the mine crack in Redbird, West Virginia, is much more powerful—and dangerous—than the one thrown in. An orphan with an unknown past, he must now figure out how to have a future. Hard-as-nails Lourana Taylor works as a sweepstakes operator and spends her time searching for any clues that might lead to Dreama, her missing daughter. Could this stranger’s tale of a pit of bones be connected? With help from Marco DeLucca, a disgraced deputy, and Zadie Person, a local journalist investigating an acid mine spill, Darrick and Lourana push against everyone who tries to block the truth. Along the way, the bonds of love and friendship are tested, and bodies pile up on both sides. In a town where the river flows orange and the founding—and controlling—family is rumored to “strip a man to the bones,” the conspiracy that bleeds Redbird runs as deep as the coal veins that feed it.

THE BACK STORY: To the Bones began when I made the comment that, back in West Virginia, if I was going to kill someone, then I’d toss him down a mine crack like the one in my third pasture field. My friend challenged me to do just that.

WHY THIS TITLE?: To the Bones is an Appalachian eco-justice zombie love story. Or a small-town paranormal mystery. Anyway—it’s a genre mashup that begins when a man wakes up in a pit of bones, and continues with four mysteries intertwined around a coal baron family in West Virginia. Darrick MacBrehon, orphan child grown to be become government auditor, gets off the highway and is ambushed at a sketchy convenience store. His bloodied head and staggering walk get him labeled as a zombie, but that’s only the half of it. Something happened down in that mine crack, something that unleashed latent powers. Darrick’s horrific and deadly talent comes just in time for him to team up with Lourana Taylor in her quest for her missing  daughter, and to take on the ruling Kavanaugh family and the terrible hold they have on this town.

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? While it’s Appalachian through and through, the deep story in this novel is one of love and despair, people who desperately love the land of their birth and rearing, yet who clearly see the despoiling and destruction wrought by the extractive industries that put food on the table. How do we make our lives in the middle of destruction? I think lots of readers will identify with that.

REVIEW COMMENTS:

“This nicely paced, suspenseful tale, imbued with detailed knowledge of the Appalachian region and the coal mining industry, is aided by Nieman’s rich, artistic language and redolent descriptions of a grim but fascinating literary ecosphere where giant cracks open in the ground, ordinary rock underfoot leaks a kind of vile pus, and orange goo fills the waterways. It’s a strange, disconcerting place populated by thoughtful, articulate people; trigger-happy rent-a-cops; zombies; and residents who can mysteriously evaporate or be stripped to the bone.” — Nicholas Litchfield in The Colorado Review.

“…blending popular genres like horror and mystery into an environmental disaster story possibly exposes a wider audience to the importance of clean water and energy. And perhaps literary purpose lurks behind Eamon’s superpowers. A coal baron, he “sucks the life out of everything,” analogous to the way coal extraction drains life from the miners, the way coal barons take the resources of the land for themselves and leave the community poorer, and the way all of us as carbon consumers extract the life from coal, which is, after all, compressed and heated former living things. Kudos to Nieman for her creativity and vision as she tackled these vital environmental themes.” — southernlitreview.com.

“Nieman, a former journalist in the Mountain State, knows a lot about economic exploitation, specifically the mining industry’s corner-cutting to create massive profits. And while the tale is steeped in enough terrifying genre tropes to satisfy zombie and vampire enthusiasts like my young former students, such tropes also reveal deep metaphorical truths. About the power of coal’s effect on the human spirit, for instance.” — Ed Davis in Books for Readers.

“In Valerie Nieman’s thrilling, genre-bending novel To the Bones, the richly rendered setting is inseparable from characters’ fears, strengths, and weaknesses and from nearly every tragedy and triumph in the story…. Instead of feeling like disparate parts, all these genre elements fit together seamlessly, and they build upon one another in satisfying ways. Finally, like Stephen King’s masterpiece The Dead Zone, Nieman’s novel insightfully portrays the complications of possessing unexpected powers, which rarely are unmitigated blessings.” — Small Press Picks.

AUTHOR PROFILE: Valerie Nieman’s fiction moves fluidly across genre, from mainstream literary to Southern crime to her most recent novel, To the Bones, a mystery/folk horror tale edged with dark humor, about a town in the grip of the coal industry. It’s been acclaimed as “a parable of capitalism and environmental degradation” and was a finalist for both the Manly Wade Wellman and Killer Nashville awards. Her third poetry collection, Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse, takes place amid the grit and glamor of a mid-century carnival, and includes work that first appeared in The Missouri Review, Chautauqua, The Southern Poetry Review, and other journals. Her poetry has been published in numerous anthologies, including Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods and Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. She has held state and NEA creative writing fellowships. A graduate of West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte and a former journalist, she teaches creative writing at North Carolina A&T State University. Pending publication is Backwater, a YA/crossover thriller to be released by Fitzroy Books/Regal House early in 2022.

AUTHOR COMMENTS: My years as a farmer and newspaper reporter in the northern coalfields provided both setting and substance for the novel. I’d struggled with the lack of water after mining cut off the springs and wells at my hill farm. You generally own only the “surface rights” when you buy land in coal country, which meant that subterranean water was not guaranteed, nor did I stand to profit from the capped gas well in the back field. (That property is likely fracked by now.) My land rested above part of the Farmington No. 9 mine, where an explosion 50 years ago left 78 men dead— the bodies of 19 of them left entombed because it was too dangerous to reach them.

SAMPLE CHAPTER: http://monkeybicycle.net/excerpt-to-the-bones/

LOCAL OUTLETS: Please shop at bookshop.org or indiebound.org where local bookstores are supported. My hometown bookstore is scuppernongbooks.com.

WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT: Amazon, Barnes &Noble, Powell’s Target, Walmart.

PRICE: $19.99 paperback or e-book.

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: http://www.valnieman.com, or my Facebook page @valerienieman1, Twitter @valnieman, Instagram @valnieman