The Columbus Dispatch

Father, son’s bond withstands tests

- By Margaret Quamme margaretqu­amme@ hotmail.com

“Southernmo­st” — the lyrical and thoughtful sixth novel by Silas House, author of “A Parliament of Leaves” — begins with an apocalypti­c scene.

A flood of biblical proportion­s has hit the Cumberland Valley of Tennessee, where the swollen river washes away houses, trees, cows and “chickens sitting in a calm line down the length of a white church steeple.”

Young evangelica­l preacher Asher Sharp, whose house sits high on a hill, rescues his motherin-law from the flood and does what he can for his parishione­rs.

He also, to the horror of his pious wife, invites a gay couple whose house has been washed away by the storm into their home. He sympathize­s with them, and, more deeply, they remind him of his estranged older brother, turned away from his family because he was gay and now occasional­ly sending cryptic • “Southernmo­st” (Algonquin, 352 pages, $26.95) by Silas House

postcards from Key West, Florida.

Asher’s wife, however, objects strenuousl­y, and the rift between them spreads into their church.

After Asher makes an increasing­ly unhinged plea for tolerance in his church, a sermon that is surreptiti­ously taped and later posted online by a young parishione­r, he is released from his duties. His wife files for divorce, keeping primary custody of their son, Justin.

Living in a trailer, working at a grocery store and missing his 8-year-old son desperatel­y, Asher kidnaps At a glance

• Silas House will appear at 7 p.m. June 26 at Gramercy Books, 2424 E. Main St., Bexley

the boy and heads to Key West.

Some might quibble at a plot that involves Asher hiding in plain sight in a tourist town for months, especially because the video has made him a nationally recognized figure.

If that plot point isn’t quite credible, however, the novel is thoroughly believable on an emotional level.

Asher’s change of heart is gradual and bumpy, and he’s far from a saintly figure. He hurts people — including his beloved mother-in-law, physically — during the process of the kidnapping, and he wrenches Justin from the life he has known.

Although Justin grows fond of Key West, he also remains constantly on edge, missing home and anxious about his father’s fate.

He and his father both reject the church they grew up in, but Asher finds a new home in an Episcopal church in Key West, and Justin feels comfort in a growing sense that “God is in everything and everybody.”

House grounds the story in a firm sense of two places — one lush and green and full of birds, the other dominated by the sun and the ocean, smelling of “saltwater and fish and overripe watermelon­s”; one with the comforts and restrictio­ns of home, the other with the pleasures and temporarin­ess of the exotic.

At the heart of the novel is the relationsh­ip between father and son, fraying yet holding firm. The strains of the situation intensify both the strengths and weaknesses of the bond. Because they’re forced to hide the truth of their situation, they can rely only on each other.

Asher is content to be a team of two, but Justin isn’t.

House builds suspense slowly and carefully, favoring complexity and ambiguity over a simple resolution.

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