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Hey, parents, having problems getting you kids to behave in church? Let them spend a Sunday with Willard Russell. Willard isn’t a preacher, and he doesn’t have one of those big mall-like mega churches. What Willard has is a log in the woods. That’s right, a damn log in the woods. A prayer log if you will, and he’s hung up some crosses around it, and he makes sure that his son Arvin is out there all the time praying with all he’s got. Don’t mind all that dried blood and animal bones. Willard thinks the Good Lord needs a sacrifice if you ask him for something big, like curing his wife of cancer. Send your little ones with him for a full day of log prayin� and blood sprayin�, and I’m sure you’ll never hear another peep out of them at your regular service again.

Willard and Arvin live in the area of Knockemstiff, Ohio, which should be familiar to those who read Pollock’s previous book. Some of the characters reappear here as he tells a story that extends from Willard’s return from the horrors of Pacific combat in World War II into the 1960s with multiple characters who all have blood on their hands in one form or another. We’ll meet a murderous husband and wife as well as a corrupt sheriff, and a bug eating holy man wannabe with a crippled sidekick.

Pollock again depicts a rural lifestyle where dreams die quickly, and the only people with any hope are the religious who remain convinced that God will someday reward them despite all evidence to the contrary in their miserable lives. As the years pass, all the characters act in ways that put them on an eventual collision course.

Another winner from Pollock who is right up there with Daniel Woodrell in depicting how harsh the rural lifestyle can be. It had a few too many coincidences in the end for my taste, but this is still a book that’s gonna be on my mind for a good long while.