NO MORE EMPTY SPACES

In Green’s debut novel, a geologist seeks fulfillment at a dam site in Turkey.

In Turkey, 1973, American geologist Will Ross has come to the remote village of Kayakale, where a vast dam is being built to harness the hydroelectric power of the mighty Euphrates. As the project’s chief foundation geologist, Will must “read the story in the rocks” beneath the dam—a story that, so far, has been giving the engineers nightmares. Will planned to come alone, but a last-minute complication (involving his ex-wife’s alcoholism) requires Will to bring his three children—15-year-old Kevin, 12-year-old Rob, and 4-year-old Didi—along with him for the remainder of the project. The children are not happy to have their lives uprooted from suburban New Jersey and dropped into a compound in the middle of the Turkish wilderness. The lone bright spot is the presence of Paula, a peppy young teacher from West Virginia who offers Will and the kids some kindness as they acclimate to their new surroundings. The whole project is put on pause until Will can figure out the cause of the mysterious voids that exist in the rock beneath the site, threatening the dam’s stability. The problem turns out to be larger and stranger than Will anticipated, and it may require more than mere scientific know-how to fix, even as his family’s situation teeters as precariously as the ground beneath his feet. Green’s prose is tender and keenly observant: “They ambled up to the base of a tower of tuff where ocher striations crisscrossed pure white rock, as if a painter had stroked a brush across it. The light moved over it as the sun rose, making the lines dance on the rock’s surface.” In the wonders of subterranean rock formations, Green finds an apt metaphor for Will’s unplumbed psyche, painting a portrait of a man desperate to keep his life from being crushed beneath the pressure of life’s obligations.

A fascinating and frequently moving novel of family and geology.