Synopsis:
For nearly a decade, twenty-nine-year-old Hudson Miller has made his living in the boxing ring. But a post-fight brawl results in a lengthy suspension that threatens to derail his career. Desperate for money, Hudson takes a gig as a bouncer at a dive bar. That’s when life delivers him another hook to the jaw: his estranged father, Leland, has been murdered in what appears to be a robbery-gone-bad at his salvage yard, Miller’s Pull-a-Part.
Soon after his father’s funeral, Hudson learns he has inherited the salvage yard, so he returns to his Bible-belt hometown of Flint Creek, North Carolina, to run the business. But Hudson learns the business is far more than junk cars and scrap metal. It was the site of an illegal gun-running ring.
The secrets don’t end there. A grisly discovery at the yard thrusts Hudson into the fight of his life.
Reeling from everything that has come to light so far and determined to find the rest of the truth, Hudson joins forces with his father’s former employee, 71-year-old, beer-guzzling Vietnam vet Charlie Shoaf, and a fierce teenage girl, Lucy Reyes, who’s intent on getting justice for her own family tragedy.
With a murderer on the loose and no answers from the local cops, the trio of outcasts launch their own investigation. The shocking truth they uncover will shake Flint Creek to its very core.
Review:
Scott Blackburn studied journalism at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and in 2017 graduated from the low-residency Mountainview Master of Fine Arts program at Southern New Hampshire University where acclaimed author Wiley Cash was his mentor. Blackburn teaches high school English full-time, as well as an online for a community college. He also enjoys training in combat sports, holding a black belt in Ju-Jitsu. He and his wife, Tiffany, reside in High Point, North Carolina with their two toddlers.
Blackburn says he never set out to be a fiction author. But he began reading more when he returned to school to earn a degree in English that would enable him to teach. But the more he read, the more interested he became in writing. “I really liked some of the North Carolina authors and the whole Southern Gothic thing,” he recalls. In addition to Cash, he was inspired by Ron Rash and Charles Frazier. It Dies with You is his debut novel. Blackburn says that unlike an earlier effort, with It Dies with You, “I knew I’d found a voice that was uniquely my own, and that made all the difference.”
Inspiration for the story came in the form of a statement from one of Blackburn’s friends: “It dies with him.” They were discussing family legacies, and “almost immediately, the vague idea of a story (and title) formed in my brain,” Blackburn recounts. An idea took hold of him about the tale of a young man who is estranged from his father, but inherits his salvage yard. He says the characters and story began to keep him up at night, and his gut told him he had “a story that needs to be told.”
As It Dies with You opens, Hudson Miller is nearing this thirtieth birthday and down on his luck. His boxing license has been suspended following an after-match brawl that he did not instigate, but in which he participated. It was caught on video, went viral on YouTube, and also cost him the prize money from that match, as well as his position he loved coaching kids at a local rec center. Although he has boxed professionally for a few years, Blackburn describes Hudson as “an everyday man” whose potential for success in the ring was always limited. For Hudson, having to “hand over my coaching whistle” hurt the most, he explains in the first-person narrative through which Blackburn tells his story. “He doesn’t have much footing in the world,” according to Blackburn, and the one thing that meant a great deal to him has been taken from him. Now he’s working as a bouncer at the Red Door Taproom and sleeping on his friend’s couch as tries to figure out how to get his license reinstated.
Hudson gets a telephone call from his father, from whom he is largely estranged. He opts not to answer the first time or when his father calls back. And his father does not leave a message. The next morning, Hudson receives another call from the police in his hometown of Flint Creek, North Carolina, informing him that his father, Leland, was fatally shot at his salvage yard, Miller’s Pull-a-Part. Hudson wonders what it was his father wanted to say to him, and whether answering his call might have made a difference. Before he can return to Flint Creek for the funeral, Leland’s employee, Charlie Shoaf, discovers the carpet pulled away from the floor in the salvage yard’s storage room, revealing a metal door. Below it are eight guns with the serial numbers ground off. More damning is the fact that each gun is tagged in his father’s handwriting. The police believe there were more guns stored there before the murder, and Leland was involved in an illegal gun-running operation.
His father’s killing and the mystery surrounding it force Hudson to confront his memories of the man. He is stunned by the prospect that Leland was running a criminal enterprise, although he does remember him stuffing rolls of money into coffee tins and liquor bottles that he hid in and around the family home. He also stockpiled batteries, flashlights, and nonperishables, and had an “everybody-is-out-to-get-us attitude.” Leland’s death also conjures up memories of the days before his parents divorced and the twenty years since his father “dismantled our family.” Hudson finds it hard to grieve a man who virtually abandoned him. “I wasn’t glad he was gone. I just wished he’d been somebody different when he was alive.” He also has to deal with his chain-smoking stepmother, Tammy. Hudson calls Tammy “as helpless a person as I’d ever met. . . . Her idea of a job, for years, was sitting her ass in the living room, smoking and drinking Diet Mountain Dew while she stuffed envelopes full of entry forms to every sweepstakes, prize drawing, and contest imaginable.” Hudson describes Leland and Tammy as “perfect for each other in the worst ways possible. Cancerously codependent.”
Part of Hudson’s resentment of his father stems from watching his mother struggle to raise him after his parents’ split. So he is curious to learn the value of Leland’s estate, and astonished when informed that Leland left him not only Miller’s Pull-a-Part, but also three rental properties. Hudson has no idea how to run a salvage yard or be a landlord, but he is determined to learn. Charlie is a seventy-one-year-old Vietnam veteran who worked under the table for Leland, and is willing to stay on and help Hudson. He lays out his terms: he has to be paid weekly in cash, left alone to do his job without being hounded by a boss, and allowed to drink beer on Saturdays. Keystone beer, to be exact. Charlie is sly, savvy, and knows that Hudson will not be able to run the salvage yard without him. Since one of the rental properties is vacant, Hudson has a place to live while the investigation into his father’s death proceeds . . . and he figures out if he can keep the salvage yard operating or should sell it.
The story is set in fictional Flint Creek, North Carolina, and based on small, mid-North Carolina towns in the area where Blackburn grew up and still resides. He says he wanted to write “something that was relatable to my own experience so that it would come off the pages as real.” It does. Flint Creek is a prominent, omnipresent character in the book and Blackburn effectively transports readers there. Hudson, Charlie, and the rest of his eclectic cast of characters are thoroughly credible, in part, because of Blackburn’s keen talent for crafting believable and, at times, humorous dialogue. He credits his ability to make his characters come to life convincingly with the fact that he incorporated words and phrases from real conversations. “Growing up in the rural South, I’ve been surrounded by smartasses and natural storytellers my entire life, and I grew up in a household where having a quick wit was an absolute must,” he explains.
Hudson has just begun to settle back into Flint Creek when the investigation into Leland’s murder takes even more shocking and deadly turns, and brings teenaged Lucy Reyes into his life. She is feisty, whip-smart, and on a mission to get justice for her family. She has been using social media to enlist help from the community. Through her Instagram account, she shines a light on what she and her family believe is callous indifference on the part of the Flint Creek police department — the same department that isn’t making much progress on discovering who killed Leland, or the motivation for that crime and the incidents that have occurred since his death. Hudson assures a cynical Lucy that he wants the same thing she does — the truth and for justice to be served. “Justice,” she responds. “A poor Mexican family getting justice in this town? That’s a good one.”
Lucy’s reaction is one of the ways Blackburn demonstrates that Hudson, Charlie, and Lucy are all, in their own ways, “outsiders” in Flint Creek. To the entrenched residents of the little town, they are “others.” Hudson grew up there, but has been away for eleven years and only returned because of his father’s death. Charlie is not from Flint Creek. Lucy’s family is actually from Texas, a fact she has had to explain “a thousand times before” to townspeople. None of the three “line up with the power center of the town,” and they all feel unwelcome due to the prejudices and ignorance of those who do. Blackburn’s story is an indictment of small town small-mindedness, as well as unharnessed power and corruption, illustrated through characters including Frank Coble, the police chief, and the existence and activities of the Boars Club, of which his father, along with “some of the most upstanding men in town,” was a long-time member. The clubhouse is where deals are brokered, decisions made, and the lives of the citizens who aren’t part of the club impacted.
Lucy, Hudson, and Charlie team up when it becomes clear that the local police are disinclined to put much effort into solving the crimes that have rocked their families. All three are fully formed, deeply sympathetic characters that readers will cheer on as they undertake their own dangerous investigation. Lucy understands the power of social media, and intends to harness it to achieve her goal. She will not be deterred until her family gets vindication. Charlie may be irascible, but his gruff exterior belies his honor and deep loyalty. Hudson needs answers so that he can at last put the past behind him and carve out a future for himself whether it be in Flint Creek or elsewhere. But if he is going to make a home for himself in Flint Creek, it has to be on his terms. And, along with Lucy and Charlie, he is intent on exposing the ugly side of the little town where people who don’t look, talk, act, and think the way the majority do are treated like “less of a person.” He declares to those who have perpetuated the status quo that he wants no part of that mentality. Hence, the book’s title: “It dies with you.”
An exploration of corrosive power and greed undergirding the workings of a small town, particularly a small Southern town, is hardly unique or innovative. But Blackburn manages to make it fresh, absorbing, and deeply moving because of his command of his subject matter, as well as the characters he brings to life. It Dies with You is a mesmerizing debut — entertaining, and richly atmospheric, with plenty of surprising plot developments, and a thought-provoking examination of families and their legacies relayed through Hudson’s experiences and emotional journey. Blackburn also explores whether second chances can work out, and if it is possible to start again in the place where your life began. Will Hudson ever learn why his father was calling him? Or will he have to accept that his father took the purpose of the calls with him to his grave? By the book’s satisfying conclusion, readers know the answer to those questions and will be clamoring for more from the very talented Blackburn who, happily, reports that his second novel is in the works.
1 Comment
This sounds a good mystery/murder.