THE ANGELS OF SINKHOLE COUNTY

In this novel, three caretakers try to conceal the death of their long-standing patient in order to keep their jobs.

Once Maj. Roger Thorndike suffers a stroke, he’s surrounded by multiple shifts of home attendants. A lonely widower, he enjoys the company of his caretakers and often flirts with them enthusiastically despite his diminished condition. The women, especially Loretta Hardwick, take to him with affectionate fondness, but they also rely on him for their livelihoods. He pays particularly well for Sinkhole County, West Virginia, a place whose name accurately sums up its economic prospects, an example of Clearman’s delightfully cheeky gamesomeness. One day, the major jokingly encourages Loretta to replace him with a local, Lyle Dunbar, an older, largely mute man who bears a striking resemblance to him. Once the major dies, Loretta decides to take that offer seriously and convinces the two caretakers who share her shift, Tammy Oakes and Cass Furrow, to join her in the subterfuge. Loretta makes this morbid proposal with a certain innocent tenderness: “If he don’t die, we still have our jobs. His kids don’t have to stress, we just carry on like we’ve been doing. Everybody’s happy.” But keeping a secret, especially one so extraordinary, is a tall order, and the major’s son, Hume, quickly discovers that the man he visited at his birth home is not his father. To further complicate things, as well as make matters even funnier, a disgruntled nurse named Trisha Vance, let go by Ruth Blitzer, the major’s daughter, gets wind of the conspiracy. Trish is more than happy to leverage that knowledge to her own advantage.

Clearman’s portrayal of the caretakers, in particular Loretta, is marvelously nuanced—these are women with bills to pay, facing the “threat of destitution,” who have a genuine devotion to the major. Cass, hilariously, teaches a course in medical ethics at a local community college, and is relatively quick to acquiesce to Loretta’s mad plan. Hume is also moved by a complex dynamic of motivations. He’s sad that his father died without his family around him, but he’s also relieved that the major’s incessant cascade of catastrophes is finally coming to an end. Hume has this thought when he realizes that, though his father is presumably alive, someone has just been buried next to his mother: “The fresh grave. The false Major. His grief mingled alarmingly with relief. His father was so much better off dead. The last four years had been a slow, grim descent into misery. Roger’s suffering, anger, delusion, and his loss after loss after loss.” While it’s predictably inevitable that word will get out that the major is actually dead, this obvious fact never undermines the plot. In fact, the stark impossibility of Loretta’s gambit is part of the book’s farcical strength. This is an impressively subtle novel—brimming with comedic sharpness, but also a sweet but unsentimental glimpse into the strange ways love expresses itself in the real world.

A mesmerizing conspiracy tale that’s entertaining and thoughtful.

A mesmerizing conspiracy tale that’s entertaining and thoughtful.