The Caretaker: A Novel

by Ron Rash

Overview

"It's 1951 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Blackburn Gant, his life irrevocably altered by a childhood case of polio, seems condemned to spend his life among the dead as the sole caretaker of a hilltop cemetery. It suits his withdrawn personality, and the inexplicable occurrences that happen from time to time rattle him less than interaction with the living. But when his best and only friend, the kind but impulsive Jacob Hampton, is conscripted to serve overseas, Blackburn is charged with caring for Jacob's wife, Naomi, as well. Sixteen-year-old Naomi Clarke is an outcast in Blowing Rock, an outsider, poor and uneducated, who works as a seasonal maid in the town's most elegant hotel. When Naomi eloped with Jacob a few months after her arrival, the marriage scandalized the community, most of all his wealthy parents, who disinherited him. Shunned by the townsfolk for their differences and equally fearful that Jacob may never come home, Blackburn and Naomi grow closer and closer until a shattering development derails numerous lives. A tender examination of male friendship and rivalry as well as a riveting, page-turning novel of familial devotion, The Caretaker brilliantly depicts the human capacity for delusion and destruction all too often justified as acts of love"--

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385544276
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/26/2023
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	22,978
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

RON RASH is the author of twenty books of poetry and fiction, including the PEN/Faulkner finalist and the New York Times bestselling novel Serena. His books have been translated into seventeen languages. He teaches at Western Carolina University.

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/31/2023

The potent and rewarding latest from Rash (The Risen) centers on a Southern man whose simple life is challenged by the tenets of loyalty, friendship, family, and honesty. Blackburn Gant is a solitary man, scarred by a battle with childhood polio and left behind in Blowing Rock, N.C., by his family, who have settled in Florida. In 1951, Blackburn becomes the town’s hilltop cemetery caretaker after the pastor offers him the position. His caretaking duties grow more serious, when his best friend Jacob Hampton, son of a prominent local family, is drafted into the Korean War and leaves his teenage wife, Naomi—uneducated, friendless, and pregnant—in Blackburn’s care until he returns. When Jacob met and hurriedly eloped with Naomi, his family disinherited him and, while generous to the townsfolk through their storekeeping business, they refuse to offer her any aid. After a sketchy encounter with Jacob’s irate father during her final trimester, Naomi returns home to Tennessee. When Jacob is medically discharged after a combat injury and returns to Blowing Rock, his parents manipulate the grim situation into an opportunity to rid the family of Naomi and her child forever. Rash expertly and seamlessly ratchets up the suspense and melodrama as both sides of this family feud seek their own version of justice with Blackburn caught up in the maelstrom. The lyrically nuanced prose faithfully evokes the Appalachian landscape, and Rash again showcases an ability to dig beneath the surface of his characters to expose their base desires and intentions. This is exactly the kind of humanitarian storytelling that fans have come to expect and savor from him. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2023-07-13
Set in Rash's beloved midcentury Appalachia, a nimbly plotted, suspenseful romance with a twist—its titular hero is the third wheel.

Blackburn Gant is by habit, inclination, and necessity a loner. Disfigured (as he sees it) by polio and abandoned by his family members, who've moved to Florida, Blackburn has taken work, permanently it seems, as live-in caretaker of a mountain cemetery near Blowing Rock, North Carolina. When his closest friend, Jacob Hampton, gets drafted into the Korean War, Gant assumes responsibility, too, for protecting and tending to Jacob's pregnant wife. Naomi Clarke, only 16, is an outlander from distant Tennessee who came east to work as a hotel maid; she's ill-educated (but working diligently on that so that she can write better letters), without means, friends, or support. When she and Jacob—scion of the town's most prominent family, shopkeepers revered for their generosity with credit during the Depression—met and fell in love, Jacob's family disowned him, and now they refuse to have anything to do with Naomi. After a scary confrontation with Jacob's father early in her third trimester, when Naomi and Blackburn venture out to the movies, Blackburn helps Naomi move back home, seven hours west, to await the baby and her husband's return. But when—as recounted in the novel's bravura opening, a hand-to-hand combat scene that evokes James Dickey's To the White Sea—Jacob is grievously wounded, his parents see the prospect of his long convalescence as a chance to put things right—or to put them horribly wrong—and they seize that chance. Rash writes with finesse and affection, as usual, of western North Carolina and its people. But the mood isn't mere nostalgia—there's a flint and an unflinching realism underneath, especially in his portrayal of the stalwart, utterly solid Blackburn Gant, that elevates the novel.

Rash's 20th book is among his best.

Kirkus Reviews

With each Ron Rash story, you expect flawed people trying desperately to survive against the odds, and a rich sense of place, and images that linger, and beautiful language that you catch yourself reading over and over. What you don’t always expect is a wicked plot. The Caretaker delivers all of the above in a story that becomes a race to the finish.”
—John Grisham

“With pulsing drama from the outset, The Caretaker can be hard to put down from one chapter to the next. Rash’s touch depicting the early 1950s in Appalachia also makes turning pages a pleasure. [The Caretaker] is crafted with the closely observed descriptions of Appalachian life that have marked [Rash’s] career. . . Rash has conjured a kind of rough-hewn Americana with his prose. He may be regionally focused in his fiction, but his works tap deep veins of human nature and national strife.”
—The Associated Press

“Potent and rewarding. . . Rash expertly and seamlessly ratchets up the suspense and melodrama. . . The lyrically nuanced prose faithfully evokes the Appalachian landscape, and Rash again showcases an ability to dig beneath the surface of his characters to expose their base desires and intentions. This is exactly the kind of humanitarian storytelling that fans have come to expect and savor from him.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
 
“[A] nimbly plotted, suspenseful romance with a twist—its titular hero is the third wheel…[The] novel's bravura opening [is] a hand-to-hand combat scene that evokes James Dickey's To the White Sea… Rash writes with finesse and affection, as usual, of western North Carolina and its people. But the mood isn't mere nostalgia—there's a flint and an unflinching realism underneath, especially in his portrayal of the stalwart, utterly solid Blackburn Gant, that elevates the novel. Rash's 20th book is among his best.”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

“Tantamount to a Shakespearean tragedy in rhythm, scope and dynamic. . . The Caretaker stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the multiple award-winning books in Ron Rash’s impressive body of work.”
—New York Journal of Books
 
“Master storyteller Rash (In the Valley, 2020) returns with a tale of friendship, love, and betrayal set in his beloved Appalachia…In lyrical, understated prose, Rash explores themes of devotion, deception, and family ties in this unforgettable story that will appeal to fans of Alice Munro and William Kent Krueger.”
—Booklist

“Ron Rash is one of the South’s most beloved storytellers, and his latest novel doesn’t disappoint. Set in 1950s Blowing Rock, North Carolina, The Caretaker is a heartfelt tale about a love triangle between Jacob, the son of a wealthy family who shuns him when he marries Naomi, an uneducated hotel maid, and his friend Blackburn, the disfigured caretaker of the town cemetery.”
—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Splendid in its evocation of time and place. [Rash] is a writer who never sets out to impress but is always impressive. There are novels you enjoy and forget. Ron Rash is one whose books always invite a second reading; they are true to life, to experience and imagination - rich treasure. The Caretaker is one of his best"
—Allan Massie, The Scotsman

"Thrilling . . . In [The Caretaker] the outcast has a heart of gold, teenage love is true love and, like the goods on display at Weaver's Hardware, everything finds its right place"
―Times Literary Supplement

"Hard to put down . . . [Ron Rash] may be regionally focused in his fiction, but his works tap deep veins of human nature and national strife"
―Independent

"Ron Rash is a vivid chronicler of deprived rural America . . . There is a taut, atmospheric melodrama . . . at the heart of this book"
―The Times

"If it's a gripping yarn you're after, look no further than this stirring tale of intergenerational deceit set in small-town America during the Korean war"
―Daily Mail

From the Publisher