Ron Rash's new novel 'The Caretaker' is a deep, touching tale set in the N.C. mountains

North Carolina writer Ron Rash's latest novel, "The Caretaker," is set mostly in 1951 and mostly in and around Blowing Rock. But it reads like a mountain ballad, centuries old, passed down from the misty isles.

Like fellow mountaineer Charles Frazier, Rash ("Serena," "The Cove," 'Above the Waterfall") was a poet before he started writing novels, and his prose has the craft of fine-tuned lyrics. And, like a good ballad, "The Caretaker" follows the clash of passions, sometimes twisted, and surfs the waves of sorrow.

The title character, though we have to wait awhile to meet him, is Blackburn Gant, who has a face twisted by childhood polio. Children can be cruel, so Blackburn has withdrawn into himself, finding his vocation as caretaker and gravedigger for a rural church cemetery. He digs the graves by himself and does small repairs around the church. Sometimes, he goes for days without saying a word.

One of Blackburn's few friends is Jacob Hampton, adored son of the one of the better-off families in Blocking Rock -- at least until Jacob elopes with Naomi, a 16-year-old maid at the Greek Park Inn. This displeases his parents, who wanted Jacob to head off to college. When he refuses to go along with an annulment, Jacob is disinherited.

Then he's drafted and shipped off to Korea. Before he goes, Jacob asks Blackburn to look out for Naomi, who's pregnant, alone and friendless in their small cabin.

You think you know where this is heading, but it doesn't, not exactly. After Jacob's father denounces Naomi as a harlot (for attending a moving-picture show while great with child) and assaults her in the streets, Blackburn helps her return to her hardscrabble family home back in Tennessee.

Then, after Jacob is wounded in action, his father conceives a cruel deception. It will be up to Blackburn to set things right, but to do so could endanger the refuge he's created for himself.

In part, "The Caretaker" offers a salute to Korean War veterans, whose ordeal and sacrifice has been too often forgotten. More than that, it's a tale of passion, honor, the job cleanly done and the true meaning of manhood. Fans of the writer Jim Harrison ("Legends of the Fall") will find much to enjoy here, and longtime followers of Rash will not be disappointed.

Book review

'THE CARETAKER'

by Ron Rash

Doubleday, $28

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: New novel from Ron Rash is The Caretaker, a deep and touching tale