The Evening Road, by Laird Hunt

Little, Brown and Company | 288 pages.

I came to The Evening Road with previous experience of its author, Laird Hunt. His American Civil War novel, Neverhome, was chosen as a selection by the One Book, One Broomfield committee I sit on. I had the chance to meet Hunt at a dinner held in his honor, and he revealed what he was then working on. The Evening Road (released in February) was inspired by the famous photo of the lynching of two young black men in Marion, Indiana in 1930. His imagination was sparked after hearing an NPR story about the 80th anniversary of “Strange Fruit,” the song Billie Holiday is possibly most famous for and which took the lynching as its inspiration as well.

The narrative is split into two halves—first we are introduced to Ottie Lee Henshaw, a white woman who joins her husband, Lee, and her boss, Bud, on their journey to see the lynching in Marion on the fateful day in August. The second part of the narrative is devoted to Calla Destry, a young black woman who happens to be light skinned enough to slip through the Indiana countryside mostly unhindered in her Dictator convertible.

No matter what, by keeping the murder of the two young boys consistently out of sight, the narrative's tension builds with the abject terror implicit in it. The implications of that famous photo reverberate throughout the novel and our national conscience almost 100 years later.

Ottie Lee and Calla have more in common than one might assume, especially their share of problems: lecherous men, overbearing family members... As these issues are alluded to, the lynching itself hovers just out of sight.

Although the two women meet only once over the course of the novel, much of the same road—literally and figuratively—is travelled by both. Certain little twists of fate bring them together, such as a prayer meeting, even if the two never actually get acquainted.

Hunt’s novel is a picturesque one that owes much to The Odyssey and the rambling journeys of Mark Twain, and it introduces us to an eclectic cast of characters and events bordering on the fantastical at the very least and potentially magical at the extreme. Hound dogs draped in neckties, deceitful country boys with political aspirations and secret lovers, a “magical” map—if you can come up with it, it’s probably here in the mix somewhere.

Even though the lynching remains unseen, it serves as motivation for these characters to move across the chessboard of their lives, and its echoes and implications permeate the narrative at every turn. As a result, the way Hunt conveys the awful day is highly atmospheric and, at times, it feels like we’re reading a horror novel, with every incident reading like an awful portent of what’s to come just off the page.

Whether it’s the specter of the lynching or the travails that these women themselves experience, commonplace cruelty is everywhere here. That famous quote about the banality of evil comes to mind. The characters in The Evening Road—peripheral ones included—all react to the prospect of the lynching in different ways: some accept it, some reject it, some mull its wrongness, as does Calla Destry, who says, “Wrong wasn’t the word for what was happening. It was a thousand miles from what needed saying.”

No matter what, by keeping the murder of the two young boys consistently out of sight, the narrative's tension builds with the abject terror implicit in it. The implications of that famous photo reverberate throughout the novel and our national conscience almost 100 years later.