BloodrootBill Loehfelm
Berkley Trade, September 2010
ISBN: 978-0425236581
From the author of "Fresh Kills" - Bill Loehfelm - comes Bloodroot, a well crafted novel that examines the idea of brotherhood and how far some people will go in order to save those closest to them.
The story revolves around two brothers Kevin and Danny Curran, and we learn the most about these two. Kevin Curran is an American history professor at a small college on Staten Island, specializing in the American founding and constitution. He has a stable, if somewhat dull life. That is until his not quite estranged, but prodigal brother Danny shows up after a three year absence. Danny was a heroin addict and general troublemaker that dragged Kevin into his misery and is about to do it again.
While seemingly clean and sober, Danny is into some nefarious activities and Kevin, as he has done before, can't resist the lurid pull of his brother. Danny manipulates Kevin like a puppet on a string, and Kevin finds himself on the slipperiest of moral slopes as Bloodroot plays out. For every line that Kevin crosses, he goes to great lengths to convince himself that any action can be justified as long as you are doing it in the name of helping someone you love. The dichotomy of these brothers creates a tension that balances on a fine line throughout Bloodroot, and this is the strongest aspect of Loehfelm's work.
At the background of the novel is Bloodroot, a former children's home where evidently children were abused and mistreated. How this plays into the drama unfolding in this novel I'll leave for the reader to discover, but it intertwines itself into the narrative and the outcome. From this basic crime plot, the story line veers into the Gothic about midway through the novel. Only instead of a dark and mysterious abbey we have a creepy abandoned home for orphan children, where horrible medical experiments took place. Danny and Kevin both have surprising connections to this terrifying old ruin. Unraveling these connections will lead to the novel's disturbing climax.
This is the kind of story telling that has been absent in literature for far too long. Bloodroot is a story about a family, particularly two brothers, and how what happened in the past and what will happen in the future hinges on what will happen in the present. The happiness - and safety - of the family depends on the actions of troubled Danny and the lengths his brother Kevin will go to for Danny's sake. Bloodroot reads well, it flows in excitement, and tension builds with a nice story line. Utterly engrossing!
BILL LOEHFELM was born in Brooklyn and raised on Staten Island. He moved to New Orleans in 1997 where he has taught high school and college, managed a pizza joint and an antique shop, and tended bar in the Quarter and the Warehouse District. Winner of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, his work has also appeared in the anthologies Year Zero, Life in the Wake, and Soul Is Bulletproof.
