There are many winners and losers amid the current political turmoil. Among the losers is the publishing industry. Indeed, The New Republic would like to know, Is Trump Ruining Book Sales? They posit that given the attention the administration demands with its many entertaining twists and turns, it’s hard to compete. And while they may not be entirely correct given that book sales rose 3 percent in 2016, there are books that missed the spotlight. One such book, unluckily released in January just before the inauguration, is Idaho, a debut novel by Emily Ruskovich. While novels with dystopian fanfare appear on list after list of books-you-must-read in the current political climate, Ruskovich’s book, though critically well-received, is not a blockbuster. Rather, it is a haunting meditation. It may not have the entertainment value of a White House press conference, but it takes on darker questions. The book, out in paperback on Nov. 7, deals with the nature of memory and the taming of it. While grappling with an account of the effects of dementia, it also raises another, more sinister question: Why would a mother kill her child?
The story hinges on one afternoon in the Idaho mountains when Wade, his first wife Jenny, and their two daughters go to collect firewood. Over the course of the day the younger daughter is killed, while the other flees into the woods. It is initially treated as a mystery whether or not Jenny truly committed the act of murder. The course of the novel follows Ann, a music teacher who marries Wade after Jenny is convicted. As Wade faces hereditary early onset dementia, Ann is plagued by a desire to know the truth of what happened that day on the mountain. She scavenges through her husband’s diminishing memory and the home once occupied by his previous family for clues that might remain.
But Jenny is guilty. That much is defined early in the book: “Murder, the moment it was committed, became less an action she’d performed than a reality that she had always, suddenly, been inside of.” The question that Ann is desperate to find an answer to morphs into a matter of motivation. How could a mother destroy her child? Ruskovich uses music as a trenchant theme through the book to explore this question. Music is bound to both innocence and guilt in a braid of understanding. The symphonic quality of the Idaho wilderness is thrown into contrast with the silence of penitentiary halls. Dissonance serves as a bridge between Wade’s two wives. And the main act of violence, the murder of a child, is an act of silencing.
It is difficult to illustrate what isn’t there, but Ruskovich deftly examines the concept of silence and uses it to heighten the impact of the euphonic themes. The paradox of absence creates a parallel structure in the novel as Ann investigates both the pain of Jenny’s inexplicable atrocity and the pain of Wade’s mental deterioration. Ann often offers translations of Wade’s state: “When you love someone who has died, and her death disappears because you can’t remember it, what you are left with is merely the pain of something unrequited.” This type of declarative and empathetic truth grapples with the abstract in a way that showcases Ruskovich’s felicity with language.
While drawing Wade’s character, Ruskovich balances his weaknesses with his expertise. Among the darker tremors through the story is how his illness poisons and twists what he knows best. Wade is a skilled craftsman and animal trainer. After encountering a neighbor’s dog being punished with a dead hen tied to it’s neck, Wade explains:
It is this type of love that is distorted as his mind betrays him. Ruskovich uses the distortion of love, it’s wretchedness, as a vehicle to show what happens when a person’s senses mingle in such a way that control becomes an illusion. Ann bears much of the burden carrying that message across to the reader through acts of surrender in states of both fear and love. But Ruskovich is careful and makes it clear that while Ann makes those sacrifices out of devotion, dealing with the disease is not romantic. While reversing traditional roles of victim/rescuer with Ann as Wade’s eventual caregiver, Ruskovich maintains Wade’s dignity. She clearly delineates what is done by him and what is done by the disease. This sensitivity and Ann’s tenderness toward Wade gives the story a weight greater than the sum of its parts.
There is a love story told, but it is not a romance. This is not a beach read. Or even a summer read. This is the type of book you want to read in a hammock among trees or woods at an altitude with thinner air. There is an edge to Ruskovich’s writing. She pushes past plot and conventional narrative structure. The chapters range and jump among decades. For any writer, a nonlinear approach can be difficult to pull off; in less capable hands the approach can signal failure, but Ruskovich uses it, as with the rest of the novel’s elements, in such a way that it is essential for the course of events, and characters themselves, to unfold.
It is not a perfect book. While the many side details may be beautiful, brilliant even, one can’t help but feel occasionally beat over the head by symbolism. But these moments are not frequent enough to discredit Rushovich’s command and authority. Her voice is certain enough to forgive its instances of overbearing determination. One way she keeps the reader grounded is through the immaculate portrayal of the dominant environment casting shadows over her characters. The Idaho mountains and terrain inform and define the nature of Ruskovich’s characters in such a way that the reader is left with a sense that this book could only occur in Idaho. The specificity of the isolation of the mountainside wilderness Wade and Jenny unwittingly confine themselves to in their early years of marriage is the direct cause of suspense when Jenny becomes pregnant. The fields and paths where Wade takes dogs to run and train are rich with essential sensory information. Idaho is more than a mere stage for these events, it is the texture and locus of the novels psychic force. It is a place to be reckoned with and Ruskovich does just that.
As the world becomes more and more beholden to technology to remember things for us, it is a welcome reprieve from the onslaught of notifications to retreat into a world where memory is treated with a reverent fear. Despite the dire pretense of the novel, the act of dwelling in a difficult story and asking those questions seems somewhat elevated from the normal escapism of fiction. Ruskovich’s debut may not have had the of-the-moment hype many of her contemporaries enjoyed, but the question of what are you afraid to forget? will call for answers long after the political tides turn.
