ALL LIES BEGIN WITH TRUTH

Viola’s novel examines the effect of environmental issues on communities and interpersonal relationships.

West York, Kentucky, is a financially struggling town, near the Illinois and Indiana borders, that was the site of a deadly underground coal mine collapse in 1994. Afterward, the mineral rights were sold to a strip-mining company that contaminated the air and groundwater, leading to a local cancer surge. In 2014, Ecological Resources, an energy company, comes to town to exploit the New Albany Shale Basin, which covers “perhaps one of the largest gas reserves known to science.” They offer lucrative jobs on a large, odorous, disruptive fracking project on the banks of the Ohio River. Lionel Boone, the only miner to survive the mine collapse, also lost his wife due to the effects of strip mining, and he becomes concerned about history repeating itself. He contacts Earth First!, a radical eco-defense group, hoping that they can find out what’s going on with the project. Thirty-one-year-old Eris Carroll, an Earth First! volunteer who dropped out of the University of North Carolina, travels to West York, and over the course of three months, she helps Boone and other concerned townspeople understand the fracking process and raise resistance. They come up against the mayor, the sheriff, and others who see fracking as key to the economic revival of the area. Although Eris’ time in West York is cut short due to family concerns, the friendship that develops between her and Boone helps them to reconnect with others. Another storyline follows lifelong West York resident Cass Estill Taylor, whose trauma propels her into action beyond civil disobedience. Small-town intrigue and gossip propels a good deal of the action of the story. The book includes extensive, informative descriptions and explanations of fracking (“Engineers used tons of water, sand, and chemicals to force ‘fluid’ through miles of piping to fracture what were once impenetrable shale basins that impeded access to large pockets of natural gas”). While the novel also importantly spends time addressing the political sway that Big Energy has over the interests of individual people, all this exposition has the effect of somewhat overshadowing the interpersonal relationships at the novel’s center.

Eco-fiction whose environmentalist message is somewhat stronger than its storytelling.