America’s greatest writers have always been Southerners. William Faulkner, Harper Lee, Truman Capote, Flannery O’Connor, Tennessee Williams – sure, there are greats from other regions of the country, but for every incredible Yankee author you can point to, I could probably rattle off the names of three equally accomplished writers from the south.

There could be any number of explanations for this phenomenon, but I think the simplest and most obvious one is that great literature is often built out of trauma, and the South has had more than its share of those. And so have the characters in David Joy’s Where All Light Tends to Go, and so will they again, and again and again over the course of the novel’s 260 pages. 

Jacob McNeely is a high school dropout living in the mountains of North Carolina, still young enough to pine for his high school sweetheart but grown up enough to understand that, for someone like him, dreams of a better life aren’t worth nurturing. So instead of trying to make something of himself, he spends his days helping his father run a sophisticated meth ring. Jacob’s mother, who long ago became hooked on the drugs her husband sells, lives by herself in a shack nearby, dying slowly of her addiction (and that slowness is the cruelest part, in Jacob’s eyes).

The plot kicks into gear after some members of the meth ring bungle an attempt at silencing an informant, and from there the pages will turn quickly as things go increasingly haywire and Jacob is pushed ever closer to having to decide between loyalty to his family and the possibility of a better future for himself.

There is plenty of suspense and violence in this novel, but it would be incorrect, I think, to call it a mystery or a thriller (though some have assigned it those genres, and it was nominated for an Edgar award). The author has described it as “Appalachian noir,” and that maybe gets a little closer, although to me the characters feel a little more lifelike, and the protagonist a little more vulnerable, than would be the case in title I have typically thought of as noir. If I were asked, I would simply call it a very dark, very Southern, coming-of-age tale.

All the classic elements of Southern literature can be found in Where All Light Tends to Go: the wild landscapes; the desperate people clinging to their independence or their illusions of independence; the family bonds that, for better and for worse and for much much worse, remain unbreakable. By marrying these staples to the sort of plot you’d expect from a thriller, Joy has created something original and new.

The story is told in the first person, and the writing is a particular pleasure. Joy has a gift for evoking a palpable sense of place without needing to break from the voice he’s given his protagonist. And it’s a good thing, because Jacob’s voice is remarkably true to life. The book has Big Ideas, sure, and perhaps if we want to indict its author for something we could accuse him of harping on the “light” motif a bit much – toward the end, I admit, I started wondering what the number would look like if I had maintained a tally of the book’s meaningful references to light of various kinds. But in general Jacob’s insights feel like they are arrived at honestly, like they have been earned, and they fit into the flow of the narrative rather than interrupting it.

Where All Light Tends to Go is a fast read, both because it’s not very long and because it has an urgency to it that will propel you through the pages. The ending may not leave you feeling particularly good, but you will feel like you have lived and learned along with Jacob, whatever that may be worth after all.