The Good Brother Book

Virgil Caudill has never gone looking for trouble, but this time he's got no choice -- his hell-raising brother Boyd has been murdered. Everyone knows who did it, and in the hills of Kentucky, tradition won't let a murder go unavenged. No matter which way he chooses, Virgil will lose.

The Good Brother, Chris Offutt's finely crafted first novel, is the story of Virgil's struggle to find his real self in the wake of an impossible choice. Traversing the American landscape from the hollows of Eastern Kentucky to the plains of Montana, Offutt explores the hunger for belonging that drives our most passionate beliefs, and in the process shows himself to be one of our most powerful storytellers.

Rob Spillman

Chris Offutt's much-praised previous books, a memoir, The Same River Twice, and a short story collection, Kentucky Straight, were steeped in the tough yet playful language born out of Eastern Kentucky's hardscrabble life. Offutt's characters, like William Faulkner's, are of a very specific time and place, but their dramatic lives and stoic acceptance of their fates are pure Greek drama. Now, in his first novel, Offutt sings the epic tragedy of one Virgil Caudell, a hardworking, loyal son whose wild brother Boyd does all of the drinking, fighting and carousing in the family. When Boyd is gunned down, everyone, including the sheriff, knows who is responsible, but nevertheless the entire community expects Virgil to exact revenge.

Torn by his love of place and loyalty to his dead brother, Virgil winds up running off to Montana, where he starts his life over with a completely new identity. As Joe, he winters in a remote cabin and befriends native Montanans, a gun-crazy, down-to-earth breed not that different from his fellow Kentuckians -- except that Virgil's new friends display an extreme hatred toward all forms of government. Even the tough single mother he falls for packs high-caliber heat and is preparing to fend off the coming ATF invasion the locals anxiously anticipate. Led by a charismatic Vietnam vet, a loosely formed militia embroils the resistant Virgil in its troubles. And when Virgil's past creeps back up on him, it's an ugly mix of hotheads and guns.

Virgil's tale unfolds languorously, allowing Offutt to display his sharp ear for dialogue and turns of idiomatic phrase -- "Education was like a posthole digger, a good tool, very expensive, but worthless unless you needed postholes dug." Offutt's characters are being bypassed by the modern world, their individuality and remoteness encroached on by technology, Range-Roving settlers and the loathed government. Offutt gives these voiceless people rough, roundly textured voices and lets them all -- deluded or wise -- have their say. In the end The Good Brother is a classic tale of violence and retribution spawning only more violence and retribution, a centuries-old story powerfully recast by a tremendously gifted storyteller. -- Salon