Writers are always trying to find the best way to tell their stories. The simplest is first-person: the reader learns only what the protagonist learns and what he thinks. In omniscient point-of-view the narrator can tell us what everybody is thinking. “Laying Autumn’s Dust” is a debut novel, but in this respect Brooks has been quite ambitious.
He has three main characters: Donny, his wife Abigail, and Jesse, their son. The speakers rotate: Donny, Abigail, Jesse, eight rotations. And it mostly works. The action, charting these characters’ difficult lives over several decades, moves right along and, as in our everyday lives, it is enlightening to hear different versions of the same actions.
In Abigail’s first section, she tells us about her courtship days with Donny, starting with the overly eventful night they went to the county fair. Parking at “Groper’s Grove” afterwards, she loses her virginity, and when Donny is suddenly attacked by three men, has the presence of mind to get Donny’s pistol from the glove compartment, shoot it over the attackers’ heads and save Donny and his friend Greg from a beating. She is remembering this years later when life has gone really sour, and she has to turn the gun on Donny to keep him from beating their son, Jesse.
Donny Hartline is a violent, selfish man, a drunk, an unfaithful husband and an incompetent, unlucky gambler with creditors, hard men, after him. Donny has no sexual scruples and, for reasons difficult to explain, is attractive to women, even underage women. Along with his other sins Donny litters, often and purposely. He is easy to hate. Raised by a cruel and criminal drunk of a stepfather, Donny may or may not entirely deserve his difficult life. But the sections told in his voice suggest he learns very little. His powers of rationalization for his wretched behavior are more than adequate.
All of this action takes place on Sand Mountain, Alabama, and not in the cosmopolitan centers of Boaz and Albertville, but rather in the far reaches of Ider and Henagar. Brooks, a native of Puddin’ Ridge, tells the story in language he knows well: “Whenever the girl weren’t in the barn” or “I throwed another stone.”
The instinct for survival in this novel takes some unusual cultural shapes. When Abigail first realizes she is pregnant with Donny’s child, for example, she and her parents discuss having her seduce and marry the innocent Jefferey, who has a crush on her. Dad urges that this be done quickly, as surely Jefferey can count.
Later, after years of verbal and physical abuse, she explains: “I cannot leave my husband. It wasn’t my vow to Donny making me feel trapped. I had made a vow to God.” Her friend Tammy assures her: “The Lord won’t put on you more than you can bear.” Maybe not, but it comes real close.
