Black River

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, January 2015:Black River is a portrait of a man shaped by the unforgiving landscape of the west – its beauty and violence and the haunting memories that fill a life. Wesley Carver is a retired corrections officer who twenty years ago was kidnapped and viciously tortured in a prison riot. After living in Spokane for 18 years, he’s come back to his home in Black River, Montana to scatter his beloved wife’s ashes, and to attend the parole hearing for the man that tortured him, destroying his hands and taking away the one thing that made him complete: playing the fiddle. Hulse gracefully unfolds the story of Wes’s past: his fraught relationship with his step-son, his father’s lonely death, and his abled hands, which "made music for the moon and the stars.” By turns angry, grieving, violent, and compassionate, Wes wrestles to find his faith, hide his fear, and move on from the two things that he’s loved. Black River is a sure-footed and powerfully drawn debut. --Alexandra Woodworth