Only Love Can Break Your Heart

by Ed Tarkington Narrated by Peter Berkrot

Overview

Ed Tarkington's debut novel draws you into a small-town American Gothic story of coming-of-age, brotherhood, and family fealty, first love, scandal, and murder. In Virginia in the 1930s, 6-year-old Rocky lives in awe of Paul, his juvenile delinquent older brother, until Paul disappears with his delicate girlfriend Leigh. Nine years later we find a teenage Rocky discovering first love (and first sex) with the neighbors' daughter, trying to come into his own, discovering his own talents, when Leigh returns, more unstable than ever and full of secrets. Eventually, when their elderly father falls ill, Paul returns to find a town -- and a family -- that cannot trust him. Just as the brothers begin to reclaim what was lost, a brutal murder threatens everything.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Indie Next Pick
Indies Introduce Selection

“A lush mystery-within-a-coming-of-age-tale-within-a-Southern-Gothic. If a book could have an Instagram filter, Tarkington’s would be set on something called ‘Nostalgic’ . . . interesting, readable and beautifully written.”—NPR Books
 
“Tarkington’s writing is talky, devoid of flash, and calls to mind a young Pat Conroy . . . propulsion is its primary attribute. Not mere plot propulsion—though there’s plenty of that, especially after the corpses turn up—but emotional propulsion: Tarkington’s fidelity to period and place is matched by his fidelity to human contradictions, to the gray area between heroism and villainy in which most of us reside. The gothic elements add spice, but the protein in this assured debut—the part that sticks to your ribs—is the beautiful but ever-threatened connection between Rocky and Paul. Only Love Can Break Your Heart is a novel about brotherhood, most of all, about the delicate fortress of that bond.”—Garden & Gun
 
“Set against the backbeat of classic rock hits of the 1970s, Ed Tarkington’s pitch-perfect first novel pays tribute to music, love and growing up in small-town America. That Tarkington throws in illicit sex, a perverted cult leader and a multiple murder only enhances the novel's hypnotic grip on its readers . . . This novel may be a murder mystery wrapped in the cloak of Southern Gothic charm but, at its essence, it's a novel about love. Love for the music that informed Tarkington’s formative years and love for the familial and romantic relationships that can hurt as much as uplift us.”—Chicago Tribune
 
“This heartbreakingly effective coming-of-age story about the importance of love in one’s life is replete with moments of harsh cruelty and tender love. Beautifully written, it vividly brings to life its Southern characters, landscape, and small-town claustrophobia. Readers will stop and reread paragraphs, not because of confusion but for the pure joy of the language . . . Fans of Kathryn Stockett’s The Help will embrace debut author Tarkington’s depiction of Southern life at a time of changing social mores. Those who liked Daniel James Brown’s The Boys in the Boat will also find much to appreciate here. Most of all, readers who can’t get enough of Wiley Cash, Ron Rash, and Brian Panowich will delight in discovering this fine new writer.”—Library Journal, starred review
 
“I’ve heard it said that all good fiction is about blood, love, or money. If that’s true, then Ed Tarkington has hit the trifecta with his soulful first novel . . . plainspoken yet elegant prose, with a heavy dash of good old-fashioned storytelling . . . And if it’s true that only love can break our hearts—as we’re reminded often in these pages—Tarkington also makes the case that only love can put us back together again. You’ll believe both things are true by the end of this novel.”—Peter Geye, author of The Lighthouse Road, for the Minneapolis Star Tribune
 
“A coming-of-age story that evolves into a whodunit with tangled roots in three families whose lives collide in 1977 . . . [a] well-plotted, generous inquiry into the intricacies of the human heart — especially the broken variety . . . Secrets abound, imaginations run wild . . .”—Atlanta Journal Constitution
 
“A clear winner—a taut, engrossing, crisply written tale of loss and abiding love.”— Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer
 
 “This is a wonderful novel about a small Southern town and love within, and outside of, families. It is not a typical coming-of-age story.”—Daily American (Somerset, PA)

“From beginning to end, the plotline is intense, never flagging. From the bleeding heart Tarkington stitches on Rocky’s sleeve there arises both scandal and rivalry, along with a touch of the paranormal and religious faith.” —Booklist
 
“Well-written and observed  . . . Tarkington carefully lays out his elaborate storyline and sensitively depicts his troubled characters.” —Kirkus Reviews

 “A rich, moody, moving novel about growing up and growing old before your time. Tarkington’s people are rakes, rascals, irascible losers, femme fatales, rich buffoons, dunderheads, beautiful loons, and one very cool dude, all balanced by the voice of a narrator you come to love as much as he loves his doomed older brother. On top of all that, it’s a very fun, deeply satisfying, page-turner of a book.”—Brad Watson, author of The Heaven of Mercury and Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives

Library Journal

★ 11/01/2015
When the Culvers move into a long-vacant mansion next to Rocky and his family in a sleepy Virginia town, they set in motion events that will eventually result in two murders, never completely solved. During the intervening years, Rocky grows up idolizing his older brother and learning about the facts of life (both carnal and spiritual) in the shadow of Twin Oaks, and of the family who occupies it. Set in the 1970s, this heartbreakingly effective coming-of-age story about the importance of love in one's life is replete with moments of harsh cruelty and tender love. Beautifully written, it vividly brings to life its Southern characters, landscape, and small-town claustrophobia. Readers will stop and reread paragraphs, not because of confusion but for the pure joy of the language. VERDICT Fans of Kathryn Stockett's The Help will embrace debut author Tarkington's depiction of Southern life at a time of changing social mores. Those who liked Daniel James Brown's The Boys in the Boat will also find much to appreciate here. Most of all, readers who can't get enough of Wiley Cash, Ron Rash, and Brian Panowich will delight in discovering this fine new writer.—Sharon Mensing, Emerald Mountain Sch., Steamboat Springs, CO

Kirkus Reviews

2015-09-23
Tarkington debuts with a busy coming-of-age tale set in the 1970s and '80s, with Neil Young as the soundtrack. Young's "After the Gold Rush" is the favorite record of narrator Rocky's adored half brother, Paul, who's 16 to Rocky's 7 when the story begins in 1977. Paul is a bad boy by the small-town standards of Spencerville, Virginia, which means he smokes cigarettes, drinks beer, and wears his hair long. Rocky's mother, the devout, much younger second wife of "the Old Man," aka Richard Askew, resents her husband's fondness for his wayward eldest, and her mistrust seems justified when Paul plucks Rocky from school and briefly abandons him in the woods for reasons that are as murky as the decision to rescue him. Tarkington does a better job with the vivid picture of the Askews' fraught home life and the Old Man's anxious maneuvering to get in with Spencerville's social elite, incarnated by the entitled Culver family, which moves into the mansion up the hill from his more modest home. Patriarch Brad Culver's accidental shooting of Paul, trespassing after dark, is only the first of the two families' disastrous interactions over the next decade, after Paul takes off with girlfriend Leigh Bowman following Rocky's abortive abandonment. Leigh returns just a few months later, initiating a series of melodramatic developments about as probable as Rocky's adolescent affair with Culver's spoiled, considerably older daughter, Patricia. Paul vanishes for years, but his intense, angry bond with the Old Man finally brings him home after Richard suffers a stroke brought on by misplaced trust in Brad Culver's financial wheelings and dealings. Tarkington carefully lays out his elaborate storyline and sensitively depicts his troubled characters, but it all seems rather pat, right down to the After-the-Main-Events summary that closes the novel by neatly wrapping up everyone's destinies. Well-written and observed, though the characters and situations are familiar from many, many previous novels.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171738235
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	01/05/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

I sat with Paul listening to records while we waited for Anne to arrive: side A of After the Gold Rush, over and over again.

On the wall above Paul’s bed hung a black-and-white image of Neil Young sitting on a bench backstage, legs crossed, an open bottle of beer beside him, eyes downcast and hidden, strumming on his big Martin guitar. His hooded brow and bisected long, dark hair made him look like Geronimo in patched, tattered jeans and an untucked oxford shirt. Neil Young. To my ears, the very name was sublimely evocative, like a line of terse, elegantly understated poetry. The exaggerated percussion and practiced sloppiness of the guitars and the barroom piano and that strange, keening, almost childlike voice made the sound seem at once ancient and otherworldly.

The lights of the Old Man’s car appeared in the driveway. Paul sighed and lit another cigarette.

“Go on,” he said. “Have a look at her.”

Downstairs, my mother sat in the living room with her Bible open in her hands—presumably seeking some last-minute spiritual fortification. She stood and smoothed her skirt as the door opened. The Old Man entered, clutching a pea-green suitcase, followed by a small woman in a gray coat.

“I never thought I’d be darkening this doorway again,” she muttered.

The Old Man grunted in agreement. When she saw me standing at the bottom of the stairwell, she smiled.

“Hello there,” she said.

“Hello,” I replied.

“Hello, Anne,” my mother said.

To my knowledge, the two women had never met face-to-face before.

“What a healthy-looking boy,” she said to my mother.

The Old Man’s forced grin looked far too painful to be worthwhile.

“Paul’s upstairs,” my mother said.

Anne slipped her coat off her shoulders and handed it to my mother.

“Would you mind bringing me a drink, Dick?” Anne asked.

“What’ll you have?”

“A rusty nail, if you can manage it.”

“I think we’re out of Drambuie,” the Old Man said.

“Just a scotch on the rocks, then.”

“I’ll take you to Paul’s room,” I said. Then I remembered: Anne didn’t need me or anyone else to show her the way around our house. I stood by silently as she crept up the stairs. The Old Man hurried to take her coat from my mother’s hands and hang it in the hall closet.

“Why don’t you come help me in the kitchen, Richard,” my mother said.

She was preparing a London broil and a broccoli casserole. The Old Man came in behind me. He took a highball glass from the cabinet and opened the freezer for ice cubes.

“I could use a drink myself,” he said.

“Don’t you dare,” my mother said.

“Christ almighty,” the Old Man muttered.

I followed him out to the dining room, where he kept the liquor and wine. He opened the lock on the cabinet and removed a bottle of scotch and poured the glass full to the lip. Glancing back at the kitchen, he slurped down about half the contents. He turned toward me, his brow furrowed.

“If you tell your mother,” he said.

I nodded.

The Old Man replenished the glass to the brim.

“Here,” he said.

He handed me the drink. I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do with it.

“Go on,” he said. “I’ve waited on that woman enough in my life.”

I walked away, holding the highball glass out in front of me as if it were the Holy Grail, brimming with the priceless blood of the Savior—so full that it was impossible not to spill.

I tiptoed around the hall to the landing of the staircase. I was still visualizing the blood of Jesus inside it—not the figurative communion wine, but the actual, syrupy stuff, dark and sticky and tasting of iron. This sacred elixir couldn’t be squandered, I reasoned. To let it spill to the ground would be a sacrilege. So I decided, in the way children do, that the one solution was to slurp off the top layer.

The whiskey was still lukewarm and almost completely undiluted. Alone at the foot of the stairs, I marveled at the heat in my throat. I felt as if my whole body and brain had been cleansed with fire.

I managed to slide the glass onto the hall table in time to muffle the cough in my elbow. When I recovered my breath, I picked up the glass. Cradling it with both hands, I teetered up the stairs and into Paul’s room.

Anne sat across from Paul in the chair next to the open window, smoking a thin white cigarette and tapping her ashes into the sill. Paul was smoking also. He stared off out the window as if he expected someone else to show up. The room felt uncomfortably quiet without Neil Young and Crazy Horse ringing off the walls.

I had never seen a picture of Anne; Paul didn’t keep one in his room. What had she looked like before? Had any of Paul’s beauty come from her? Had she ever been beautiful at all? She certainly wasn’t alluring, as I imagined a “fallen woman” should be. She had an ugly mouth, with thin, angry lips. She wore too much makeup, or maybe not enough. It looked as if it had been applied with the express purpose of appearing careless. That air of indifference was the only way, really, in which Paul resembled her at all.

“Come into my parlor, darling,” she said.

I walked toward her and handed her the drink.

“Did you taste it to make sure it isn’t poisoned?” she asked.

“No,” I stammered. “I just spilled a little.”

“I’m teasing you, child,” she said.

She held her cigarette aloft with one hand and sipped her drink with the other, taking her measure of me. I rocked back and forth from my heels to the balls of my feet, contemplating the numbness of my lips and the sudden thickness of my tongue.

“So,” she asked, “am I as monstrous as you’ve been led to believe?”

The question confused me.

“I don’t think Rocky here has an opinion, Mom,” Paul said, his eyes still fixed on the window.

“How would he?” Anne said. She sipped her drink. “You all prefer to behave as if I don’t exist.”

“He’s seven years old, Mom.”

“Almost eight,” I added.

“When’s your birthday?” Anne asked.

“July twenty-ninth,” I said.

Anne’s mouth fell open. She gaped at me for a moment before turning to address Paul.

“You never told me that,” she said with a dry chuckle. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“Why would I?” Paul said.

“What?” I asked.

She aimed her small, cold eyes at me as she stamped out her cigarette.

“We have the same birthday, young Richard,” she said.

“You and me?” I asked.

“That’s right,” she said. “How could this have escaped me, Paul?”

“Maybe somebody told you and you just forgot,” Paul said.

“Maybe,” she said, still chuckling. “Maybe. Well, young Richard, I won’t forget this time.”

“Thank you,” I said, assuming she meant to send me a present.

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