WILDCAT

In Dunn’s novel, a retired English teacher returns to the now-transformed Appalachian Rust Belt town he lived in during his senior year of high school, revisiting the love and loss he experienced a half-century ago.

An unnamed narrator remarks that he feels like a “bloomed-out iris in a patch of Wildcat mayapples” now that he’s has retired to Wildcat, a mining/mill town where “Interlopers are rare, even ones like [him] who lived here for a short time.” He has returned, some 50 years later—after living in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Upstate New York—at the suggestion of an old friend, Dominic Vitali, who informed him of “Wildcat’s magical changes, ones so different from the disastrous ones of the past” and the news that Carolyn Zalewski, the narrator’s first love when he lived in Wildcat during high school, is back in town. The main character, who had a career as an English teacher and writer, describes “Hotel Wildcat, my new home”—a living/dining collective with inhabitants engaged in artisanal activities (mushroom farming, sassafras furniture molding, and so on) and enjoying locally sourced food. He walks around Wildcat, interacting with various townsfolk and locales, including the riverfront where there are “chunks of concrete scattered here and downstream, a result of the time someone blew a hole in the dam.” The narrative eventually details the momentous events at which it hints early on—mine and dam explosions and a mill fire—that, decades before, jolted the town and the narrator’s relationship with Carolyn. The story ends with sightings of ghosts (dubbed “The Shadows”) that linger in the area, and a celebratory community event. 

Dunn appropriately gives his book the subtitle “An Appalachian Romance”; it is indeed a love story, although it’s less about the man and woman at its center and more about the strikingly vibrant world that the author has created. The exact location of fictional Wildcat within Appalachia isn’t revealed, and one can argue that Dunn’s depiction of a modern Rust Belt town as a hub of back-to-the-earth sustainability and artistry is a utopian vision. Still, with his specifics about Wildcat’s new craft-making (who knew sassafras had such uses?), Dunn effectively makes the case that retooling is possible for any town, which makes this book a welcome alternative to the downbeat works that one often sees regarding the region. The novel’s other strengths include how Dunn dramatically shapes the narrative with headline-style punctations; he gives the word “Bang” its own page, just past the novel’s midpoint. His slow revelation of what led to the town’s tragic events is also effective, as when he introduces Carolyn’s brooding brother and the “sickly yellow” interior of her home. At its core, however, this novel is a lovely ode to nature, from a ramps-collecting idyll of young lovers to the “confluence” of the riverfront where “all thoughts and feelings and experiences fail, and it’s upon places like these that The Shadows endure.” This theme culminates in “Lost Surreal Interlude,” a marvelous final section that offers a lightning round of observations of the natural world.

A riveting unfolding of past traumas and joyful celebration of nature and renewal.