A 
THE WORLD MADE STRAIGHT BY RON RASH
Reviewed by Gloria Oster
Asheville, Marshall, Mars Hill - these neighboring towns provide the backdrop for Ron Rash's new novel The World Made Straight. Rash's setting, however, does not relegate this novel to that category of literature interesting only because it highlights the idiosyncratic nature of "Appalachian culture."
To be sure, we have the stock characters of Appalachian literature � the tobacco farmer, the high school drop-out, the disenfranchised, and the victimizers, reminiscent of backwoods characters in James Dickey's Deliverance. We also have the present's inextricable connection to the past, yet another characteristic of Southern and Appalachian fiction. In this work, the present is scarred by a massacre that took place during the Civil War. Rash's novel, however, like Dickey's, rises above the merely regional to present a worldview explored in many modern American classics. Western North Carolina, Rash has shown, is a place where the "verities" of human life appear as readily as in William Faulkner's corner of Mississippi.
Set during the late 1970s, the novel's two main characters are descendants of the Confederate and Union sympathizers who lived side-by-side in Western North Carolina during the Civil War. Leonard Shuler's ancestors were among the Confederate perpetrators of the massacre. Leonard has returned home after losing his teaching position, then his wife and daughter. According to his ex-wife, Leonard has lived life "in passive voice," and from what we see of him in the opening of the novel, his ex-wife is right. Leonard is a part of the community's drug culture and has few expectations of life, yet we sense in him a yearning toward the good, true, and beautiful. His interest in music, history, and the journals of his great-great grandfather, who was a doctor in the community, reveals his education and his buried sensibilities.
The other main character, 18-year-old Travis Shelton, a descendent of the victims of the massacre, is suffering under the weight of an ignorant, insensitive father. Travis has dropped out of high school, but is more intelligent than his circumstances have allowed him to show. His instinctive struggle against the anti-intellectual attitudes of his family and friends draws him to Leonard. The ironic juxtaposition of their families' history lends poetic richness to their growing bond.
These two characters explore the site of the massacre and comb the library's resources about the event. Their musings about the perpetrators' motivations and the victims' emotions bring the reader into the debate over the ambiguous nature of good and evil. The ugly residue of history is paralleled by ugly events in the present, largely instigated by Carlton Toomey, a vicious drug dealer/farmer. The conflicts generated by this character keep the novel's pace moving quickly.
Among the novel's most rewarding elements are the artistically elegant details that help convey the novel's vision. Leonard recalls his former music appreciation professor, wounded in World War II, conducting music with his three-fingered, half-palmed hand, a symbolic reminder of the effects of evil unleashed in the world. Professor Haddon, his loss obvious, declares: "There is beauty in this world...more beauty than any of us can fathom, and we must not ever forget this."
Professor Haddon introduces Leonard to Handel's Messiah. As Leonard listens to his own recording of it, he marvels at the expansiveness of the oratorio's conclusion: "That was the wonder of it...the balance of the thing, everything countered, not just balanced but reconciled as the tenor voices resonated below the ethereal sopranos. Even the words proclaimed an order, the crookedness of the world made straight. It was, Leonard recognized, such a magnificent order as to demand devotion...."
Readers will find The World Made Straight a compelling story and Ron Rash a skilled storyteller, but the novel accomplishes a larger, more intensive purpose. Rash has taken the trappings of Appalachian culture and, in this crucible, has shown how mysteriously the forces that motivate human behavior work, both politically and personally. The ending affirms a notion shared by many acclaimed American writers: Evil is an omnipresent, powerful foe, seemingly driving individuals and therefore history; good, nevertheless, is still a formidable and worthy contender. While injustices of the past are sometimes not rectified for generations, this novel reinforces the idea that justice and good are at work in surprising ways - making the world straight in a manner that celebrates human dignity and love.
Reprinted with permission from "A! The Magazine for the Arts"
