Down in the River: A Novel

<p>After the death of his sixteen-year-old twin sister, Lyle Rettew moves from the mountains of Idaho to Eugene, Oregon. His religious, well-intentioned older brother has forbidden any mention of her name. But Lyle, fighting to keep his memory of her alive, has quit taking the lithium that numbs his mind, and openly rebels against his mother and brother for the first time. Taking his mourning out of the house, he embarks upon a fraught pilgrimage that is at once heartbreaking and macabre. Dark though it may be, Lyle's fevered journey along the margins of youth culture is ultimately driven by fierce love and a deep, instinctive need to find a liturgy for loss and grief.</p>

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Blacketter, Ryan

Mental Health

Slant

Horses All Over Hell

Horses All Over Hell follows the twin tensions of Marty’s drinking and Joanna’s newfound religious sobriety—in a small Idaho city on the Snake in the early nineties. In “Starlings,” Marty and Aunt Darlene enter Joanna’s bedroom with a sack of beer late at night, seeking to revive her old, drinking self. “They Work at Night” features Marty’s escalating drinking. Also presented is Joanna’s intense new friendship with an artist named Lucy. In “Sending Those People Home,” ten-year-old Cory laments that his mom isn’t like the other church mothers. He keeps her best photographs under his bed. Despite this family’s troubles, and whatever their fate, they ache for each other and make their own, often poignant gestures toward love.

Horses All Over Hell: Stories

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Wipf and Stock

Wipf & Stock Publishers

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Books by Blacketter, Ryan