A review/reflection of A
Land More Kind than Home by Wiley Cash
What
happens when you realize that home is not safe, is not where you want to be,
and you try to leave? What do we do when we do not want to go home?
We have our trite sayings about
home, “Home is where the heart is,” and “Home is where you hang your hat,”
suggesting the notion that home is a transitory place that can move with you
but always a good place to be, but I wonder about such a saying. Is it true
that wherever you plant your feet, that is where you will find “home”?
There is
always the home of your childhood. This is the place where you grew up, where
you learned and claimed the values and behaviors that you have today. This is a
home that you cannot chose and that you cannot create, but that is given to
you. In a sense, this is your family, your roots, and what many people wrestle
with all of their lives. You can’t choose your family and you can’t choose your
home. In his novel Wiley Cash is speaking to this kind of home.
In this
novel, Cash is painting a picture of a small North Carolinian town that is
“possessed” by a deceptive, Pentecostal/snake-handling preacher. In many ways
he can be seen as the antagonist of the work. Yet what is deeper than the evil
actions of the preacher are the ways that people are wrestling with their
relationship with what is their home. One of the main characters, the father of
two boys, has rejected his own father, his demon of alcoholism, and his hurtful
and violent ways. This man moves to a different part of town, lives in a way
that his father never lived, trying to leave his home, but is pulled back. A
child’s sense of home is drastically changed through tragedy and he no longer
feels safe with his parents or in the place where he grew up. A town looks to a
practice of religion that under one pastor was benign but under another manipulative
and dangerous and yet it is a part of who they are. It is home. Home is not
where the heart is but where there is pain and suffering and tragedy. Home is
loss. Home is hatred. Home is betrayal.
We have our
platitudes that we utter about home and family saying how important family is,
how good it is to be home, and what a sense of comfort we find in such places.
Yet Cash pulls us to embrace what for many people is a reality; home can be
hell. Home can be a horror. This is a reality for many people in our day and
age, and yet we do not want to overtly acknowledge. Sometimes people are not
good parents. Sometimes church is not safe. Sometimes a community is not a
happy place to be. Sometimes home is not where you are wounded and hurt and you
gain not love but scars. There is a hope that there is a land that is more kind
than home and so many people are striving to find it.
A word on
the style of the novel. Cash not only weaves in and out of the timeline but with
the narrators as well. The book is always told from the first person, but that
first person could be an elderly midwife, a nine-year-old boy, or the town sheriff.
It is a bold approach to storytelling and Cash does not fail in this technique.
Through the different points of view Cash offers a deeper look at the main
characters, of which is only one of the narrators. We are brought into the
community through the diversity of narration and shown the “home” of many of
the people in that community and why that home may be so painful. While the
conclusion does not offer any satisfaction, after time and reflection I have
found Cash’s novel profound and challenging.
What is my home? Is it something
that I would embrace, celebrate, or am I looking for a land that is kinder?
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