The World Beneath

by Aaron Gwyn

Book Overview

One cold November morning in Perser, Oklahoma, Sheriff Jerry Martin receives a disturbing call: a local fifteen-year-old has disappeared. The boy, J.T., who is half Mexican, half Chickasaw and has been raised by his grandmother, is known for starting trouble. Sheriff Martin sets out on a fevered search, determined to find J.T., even as the hunt reopens wounds from a traumatic event in his past. In a seemingly parallel but ultimately intersecting story,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393067238
• ISBN13: 9780393067231
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

"What do I do?" I asked him. "Go under."

Gwyn explores myth and reality, the world above and the one below and the secret places of the human heart, where guilt, shame and fear reside in a provocative tale set in Oklahoma. When JT, a young boy, half-Mexican, half-Chickasaw, goes missing, Sheriff Martin begins his investigation with a premature despair- he fears this boy's story will not have a happy resolution. JT doesn't fit well anywhere, a loner without a father who is seduced by the Chickasaw myth of Shampe, "the vanisher" who resides underground and captures unsuspecting victims for a new life below the earth. Hoping for another such existence, JT prays, "Let me be taken." This concept of another plane of existence is further explored when decorated Iraq war vet Hickson Crider discovers a hole in his backyard, a hole that apparently has no bottom. Suffering from PTSD, Hickson has maintained a simple daily regimen since his return to civilian life, but his grip on normalcy is threatened by recent events. Hickson and his neighbor, another Iraq veteran, build a shed over the hole in Hickson's yard, but a crevasse has opened in Crider's psyche, a breach that will grow until he is thrust back into the more familiar reality of his experiences on the battlefield. Sheriff Martin and Hickson Crider live in parallel universes; both have reason to worry about the whereabouts of JT, but for different reasons. JT's uncertain fate has reawakened Martin's pain over the loss of his younger brother, Pete, years ago. That inexplicable loss has taught Martin that there are really no accidents, convincing him "if you knew the effects, you could trace them to the cause". But to Hickson, the world is less predictable. Researching stories of cities built below the surface, Crider imagines the earth's crust vulnerable, that "miners have come from other lands to make it brittle. Because of them, your life could collapse." Martin's activities collide with the altered reality of Hickson's distorted perceptions, the consequences of an impulsive act of violence begetting even more tragedy. The shadowed regions of the mind prove just as dangerous, just as filled with pitfalls as the imagined world beneath the earth, neither predictable, both mapped with human error. In a brilliant contrast of complex characters caught in crisis, the author reveals a desperate search for place, some willing to reach towards the light, others stumbling into darkness. Luan Gaines/2009.