Homecoming and Reckoning “Inside” Amy Rowland’s Second Novel https://ift.tt/Rt7IAFY
Like nearly every great novel written with a Southern backdrop, Amy Rowland effectively and beautifully captures the dramatic landscape within her newest work, Inside the Wolf. Rachel Ruskin has long been removed from her rural community of Shiloh, North Carolina. She moved to New York City for college and doesn’t look back until a series of events forces her to do so. First, her beloved brother dies by suicide. Then, she is denied tenure for her research on Southern folklore. Less than a year after her brother’s death, both of her parents are killed in a car accident. With a career circling the drain and her family’s tobacco farm in need of management, Rachel does what many say you cannot do: she returns home.
Once back in North Carolina, Rachel is forced to face the ghosts of her past and a tangle of emotions. She is straddling two worlds, ready to make a break from the community whose ways are rooted in the past (guns, violence, harmful cultural traditions), until another tragedy – eerily similar to the one she faced in her youth – stops her in her tracks. While contemplating the future, Rachel says, “It is impossible to think of the future here, because it is impossible to think of it changed.” Ultimately, Inside the Wolf is a story about moving forward, but also about understanding the value of your roots, working with tradition and progression, and finding comfort in standing still.
There is also the vital symbol of the wolf, and Rowland uses folklore of the land in her character’s story and throughout Inside the Wolf. Witches, wolves, and ghosts are omnipresent within Rachel Ruskin’s life, but not in an obtuse way. Wolves follow her and help her in her hardest times; ghosts live in her attic, in the woods, but also in herself; and the witches who appear in her dissertation, the ones who “slip their skin,” similarly allow Rachel to become something new. Rowland allows the folklore and the reality to intermingle, and it is up to the reader to determine what’s real and what’s imagined.
Rowland has the ability to capture large issues and emotions, and distill them into the perfect poetic, lyrical sentences, creating a read that is as natural as it is necessary. She is able to educate about timely topics as she simultaneously establishes connections between characters, the land and its natural inhabitants, and within past and present selves. Her words paint a beautiful portrait of serene land and painful truths: “It’s hot and I can’t sleep. In the shower I find dirt under my nails and a thin ring around my neck, and I am filled with the old fear of being dirty. The soil is in us. I scrub my nails until my cuticles bleed, and dirt lodges in the cuts.” Redemption and evolution are heavily emphasized (rightfully so) within each sentence, and Inside the Wolf is a stellar example of letting a story unfold organically, without much pretense.
FICTION Inside the Wolf
By Amy Rowland
Algonquin Books
Published July 11, 2023
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