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    Black River
    Black River
    Black River
    Audiobook8 hours

    Black River

    Written by S.M. Hulse

    Narrated by George Newbern

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    When Wes Carver returns to Black River, he carries two things in the cab of his truck: his wife's ashes and a letter from the prison parole board. The convict who held him hostage during a riot twenty years ago is being considered for release.

    Wes has been away from Black River ever since the riot. He grew up in this small Montana town, and, like his father before, he made his living as a corrections officer. A talented, natural fiddler, he found solace and joy in his music. But during that riot, Bobby Williams changed everything for Wes-undermining his faith and taking away his ability to play.

    How can a man who once embodied evil ever come to good? How can he pay for such crimes with anything but his life? As Wes considers his own choices and grieves for all he's lost, he must decide what he believes and whether he can let Williams walk away.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJan 20, 2015
    ISBN9781494578480
    Black River
    Author

    S.M. Hulse

    S. M. Hulse’s first novel, Black River, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, an ABA Indies Introduce title, an Indie Next pick, and the winner of the Reading the West Book Award. Hulse received her MFA from the University of Oregon and was a fiction fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. An avid horsewoman, she has lived throughout the American West.

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    Reviews for Black River

    4.5/5

    98 ratings18 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 3/5
      The story is definitely engaging and the author gets into important feelings. Along the way, there’s a lot of gruesome detail, so be prepared. The ending does not give a complete resolution. The reader has to guess what might happen next.
    • 5/5
      I can’t say it better than Amazon does in its January 2015 book of the month review. How a person is shaped by the culture and landscape of his life shows so strongly in this book, as a former Montana prison guard struggles to understand his step-son and struggles with his faith as he confronts a “born-again” Christian prisoner who tortured him at the prisoner’s parole hearing.
    • 3/5
      I can understand why other readers loved it--it's well-written and full of dramatic moments (And death. So. Much. Death.)--but it just wasn't the right book for me.
    • 5/5
      Very well written, beautifully read, each character, even the violin and the horse play an important role in this touching story. Encouraging to read a book where Christianity is held in a strong and true light. The struggle to believe is graciously portrayed amidst trials few must endure.
    • 5/5
      A story of loss, in so many senses of the word, and the possibility of connection. Wesley, a former corrections officer and former fiddle player, watches his wife die of leukemia, and tries to connect with his stepson, all the while dealing with the trauma of a prison riot and the prospect of parole for the man responsible. Not a spoiler - you can learn this in the first chapter or two. But oh, how it plays out, how Hulse builds each character and the rhythm of small town Montana, gives us such close access to Wesley and others. A stellar, intimate story. Not to be missed.
    • 5/5
      fiction (modern western / human drama). I've summed this up as "men who don't talk about stuff trying to cope with modern problems" but it doesn't really do justice to the depth and richness of the writing and characters.

      I think I maybe heard S.M. Hulse was about to come out with a new book (and I'd checked this one out because the reviewer had pointed out how good her first book was), but I don't see anything forthcoming right now, so perhaps I am misremembering. In any case, she is an author to look out for.
    • 5/5
      Black River is a bittersweet and sometimes heartbreaking story that is, ultimately, uplifting. In this debut novel of love, loss and grief, it is S. M. Hulse's exploration of faith, forgiveness and redemption that make it such an outstanding and riveting read.

      Wes Carver is an ex-corrections officer whose life was forever changed by a prison riot that scarred him both mentally and physically. Now the inmate who kidnapped and tortured him during the riot is up for parole and Wes has two reasons to return to Black River: bury his beloved wife Claire's ashes and speak at Bobby Williams' parole hearing. Also waiting for Wes is his estranged stepson Dennis and the complicated history that resulted in an almost twenty year rift between them. Haunted by his losses and regretful for past mistakes, will Wes be able to let go of the pain and anger he has carried for so many years?

      Wes views the world in black and white and he has a very rigid definition of right and wrong. From a generation that carries pain and sorrow deep inside, he does not discuss past mistakes or wrong decisions. Wes is very stoic and unable to articulate his emotions. He is a good man, but his career as a corrections officer coupled with his long held beliefs make it virtually impossible for him to judge a man on his own merits. Underneath Wes's pragmatic and unemotional demeanor is a deeply spiritual and immensely talented man whose search for faith is challenged by the loss of his ability to play the fiddle and newly discovered information about Bobby Williams.

      Wes and Dennis's reunion is uneasy and fraught with tension. Their unresolved history hovers between them and they step very carefully around one another. Wes is surprised by the changes in Dennis but their past issues sometimes bring glimpses of the boy he used to know to the surface. Wes ignores the opportunities to get to the root of their issues and when he reverts to his old patterns, he destroys what little progress the two men have made in repairing their fractured relationship.

      Black River is a poignant novel of healing that is quite compelling. The characters are deeply flawed but sympathetic. Their conflicts are believable and easy to relate to. S. M. Hulse provides a realistic conclusion to the story and while not everything is fully resolved, the overall ending is satisfying and hopeful. All in all, a very impressive debut novel that is incredibly moving and one that I heartily recommend.
    • 4/5
      "Black River", with its immediate sense of place, compelling storyline, and memorable characters, is a remarkable debut work from author S.M. Hulse. Like the men before him in his family, Wes Carver was a correctional officer for the Montana State Prison, which was located not far from his small home town of Black River. During a prison riot, Wes was tortured and maimed, losing his ability to play his beloved fiddle. Wes and his wife Claire eventually moved from Black River, leaving behind not only the prison, but also Claire's troubled teenaged son, Dennis. Years later, just before Claire's death from leukemia, she requests to go home to Black River. Wes complies, but Claire passes away before they can make it, and Wes travels home with the silent companionship of Claire's ashes. A tense reunion with Dennis is compounded by the upcoming parole hearing for Bobby Williams, the man who had forever changed life for Wes and his family. Can Wes live with whatever the verdict may be, even if the outcome is the unthinkable? Will he find a way to begin healing himself and finding some sense of peace, or will the cycle of violence remain unbroken? "Black River" is a quick, involving read that will leave a lasting impression.Review Copy Gratis Amazon Vine
    • 4/5
      Spare well written novel. I did not identify or really like the characters, but they were interesting and well developed. The author teases out the story very gradually, and the conversations/arguments felt very real. No happy endings, just realism and grit.
    • 5/5
      I really want to do this book justice, but there is so much to chew on and mull over and consider, that I know I will still be thinking about it for a long time. I am not usually drawn to novels in which faith plays a central part but this portrayal of one man’s struggle and yearning for faith and the understanding of grace felt incredibly real and authentic to me. Wes Carver is a good man but one who struggles, and as such, he is an incredibly sympathetic character, even as the reader feels some frustration with him. He cares about people but can’t show it in ways that they need; he feels deep pain but his stoic exterior leads people to assume a lack of feeling; and his reticence prevents him from making the human connections that could, ultimately, be his salvation. This novel is beautifully written and somber and stark in tone but with enough hope allowed to shine through to ultimately be satisfying and worthwhile.I haven’t done the book the justice I wanted to, or that it deserves. Some books just strike the right note at the right time for a reader, and this was one such for me. I am so glad I read it and hope that more readers will give it a try. I look forward to more work by S.M. Hulse.
    • 5/5
      Black River by debut author S.M. Hulse was an outstanding read. An American tragedy that draws the reader in with it’s detailed rendering of a unique character. Wes Carver is a complicated, driven yet broken man. He is a hard man to understand or get close to, in fact, it appears that only one person ever has broken through the outer shell and that would be his wife, Claire, who has just passed away from cancer. Wes brings her ashes home to Black River, a small town in Montana whose claim to fame is that the state prison is located there. Wes and Claire once lived in Black River and Wes worked as a correctional officer, but 20 years ago a prison riot changed their lives. Held and tortured for 39 hours by a vicious inmate, Wes’s rage, fear and grief are still bottled up inside him. But the prison riot isn’t the only reason why Wes is scarred, he grew up in the shadow of a father who committed suicide and there was an incident with his stepson that caused great damage to the family and saw Claire and Wes move to Spokane. As Wes arrives back on the ranch that was once his home, he learns that the person responsible for his scars, burns and smashed fingers is coming up for parole. With his silent stoicism and rigid morality Wes Carver is a hard man yet we do see another side, a much gentler man who lost the ability to play his violin and express his inner soul through his music when his fingers were smashed. Black River is both harsh yet delicate in it’s portrayal of one man’s quest for grace and the author hit all the right notes. There is a great deal more to this story than I have described here, but rest assured that Black River is a wonderful story of both rage and redemption.
    • 5/5
      This has been getting a little Pulitzer buzz, and I can see why. Wes goes home to Black River to bury his wife and to grieve for her. He is a prickly man, not good at showing his emotions. This has made a relationship with his equally difficult stepson nearly impossible.
      Wes was a prison guard at the State Penitentiary when a riot broke out in 1992, and he was tortured by a man who broke all his fingers, taking away his one true peace: playing his fiddle. Now this man is up for parole.
      Add in a troubled teen with a shining musical talent and this could end up as a smarmy Lifetime movie. But this was nothing like that.
      Quiet writing, like Kent Haruf, but not quite- it captured the beauty and danger of Montana's mountains, and of the people who live there. Wes is far from perfect, and often unlikable. Actually, every person in this book has flaws. But they all try, and each has at least one thing that makes him/her a better person.
      Ultimately, this is about grief. Wes lost his faith when he lost his fiddle, he never really understood his father's death, his wife has passed, and his relationship with his stepson is in shambles. But, one at a time, he tries to come to terms and make what he can better. In his own, gritty, gruff Montana way. Kudos to Ms. Hulse for writing a gritty and gruff, yet tender, book that's no where near the Lifetime or Hallmark channels.
      4.5 stars.
    • 5/5
      I was amazed at how good this was, especially when I saw the picture of the author inside the back cover, a young woman! The steady pace toward an unknown---it just builds step by step with some remarkable twists and turns as you learn what has come before.
    • 5/5
      The publisher whets our appetite for the story: When Wes Carver returns to Black River, he carries two things in the cab of his truck: his wife’s ashes and a letter from the prison parole board. The convict who held him hostage during a riot, twenty years ago, is being considered for release. Wes has been away from Black River ever since the riot. He grew up in this small Montana town, encircled by mountains, and, like his father before him and most of the men there, he made his living as a Corrections Officer. A talented, natural fiddler, he found solace and joy in his music. But during that riot Bobby Williams changed everything for Wes — undermining his faith and taking away his ability to play. Tutu says: If ever a book were written to bring me out of a reading funk, this one is it. S. M. Hulse, in her debut novel, has given us an anguished and compelling tale of love and regret, condemnation and forgiveness, life and death, acceptance and rejection. She sets the story in the starkness of Montana mountains, leading several reviewers to declare the book to be a "western". The theme however, is much more universal. This story of human tragedy could take place in any small town in any part of the country.Through an alternating series of flashbacks and current narrations, we follow the life of Wesley Carver, his wife Claire, his step-son Dennis, and assorted friends, co-workers, and relatives. The story of the prison riot and its impact on his life is the center piece. The theme of faith, forgiveness, goodness and evil provides the underpinnings. Watching Wes as he works through his grief over Claire's death, his feelings about the impending parole hearing for the prisoner who held him hostage, his relationship with his estranged step-son, and how he deals with the loss of the musical ability he took such joy in gives the reader a poignant tale of heart-breaking beauty.The writing is clean, poetic, full of imagery and emotion. The story is short (only 232 pages,) and well-paced, without an extra word, but with the ability to paint scenes that bring us to tears. Even the ending is exceptional. This is the best book I've read this year. I can't wait to see more by this author.
    • 4/5
      It was impossible to be lost in western Montana. The mountains were always there against the sky, their unchanging silhouettes as sure as any map.Driving to his hometown deep in the canyon made by mountains, retired Corrections Officer, Wes Carver feels lost. Sixty years old and widowed five days earlier, Wes is returning to appear at the parole board hearing of the convict who tortured him twenty years ago during a prison riot. Bobby Williams, claiming to have “found Jesus”, is now a Bible-reading, church-leading model inmate. Even knowing he will have to relive the trauma of his thirty-nine hours at the hands of a sadist, Wes forces himself to attend the hearing for fear Williams will be granted parole. At the same time Wes hopes to repair the rift between himself and his stepson, Dennis, who still resides in Black River. Black River puts faces on the big questions of faith and justice and reparation. What does it say about faith that a criminal can “find” it and a church-going man “lose” it? Is justice served if Billy goes free while Wes remains disabled by the physical and emotional wounds he inflicted? In her first novel S. M. Hulse draws on a harsh landscape of intimidating mountains and descending valley roads to portray the devastation of loss, softening it with the soul-saving music of Wes Carver’s fiddle. Hulse deftly inhabits the male world of stoicism, violence and punishment, wrangling out of it a searing drama certain to impress a large audience.
    • 5/5
      Black River, S.M. Hulse’s debut novel, is one of those books that come around every so often to remind me of why I so much enjoy reading and why I am always willing to take a look at debut novels and books by new-to-me authors. It is that good. The novel tells the story of Wes and Claire Carver, man and wife, who left Black River eighteen years earlier because of what happened to them in that little Montana town. Now, Wes is back. And he really doesn’t want to be there.For generations, the best paying jobs in Black River have been inside the walls of the local prison. Many of the prison’s correction officers, in fact, have fathers who themselves once held the same jobs they are working today. Wes Carver is no exception, but for Wes it all went terribly wrong during a prison riot during which he was taken hostage by a psychopath – and tortured for 39 hours. Wes, even though he worked at the prison another two years, emerged from that experience a broken man, both physically and mentally. Then, after a near violent confrontation at the dinner table between Wes and his stepson, he and Claire leave Black River to start a new life for themselves in Spokane, Washington. Now Wes has returned to Black River for two very different reasons: to bring Claire’s ashes back to her son and to testify at the parole hearing of the man who almost tortured him to death twenty years earlier. Finally forced to confront all his old demons (including his relationship with the step-son he has barely spoken to for the past eighteen years), Wes is not having an easy time of it. Now his friends are starting to wonder which of the two tasks will destroy him first.Black River, largely told through flashbacks, is filled with interesting characters and plot twists, and its setting is so vividly rendered by Hulse that the reader gets a clear feeling of what life in such a geographically isolated and self-contained location must be like. This is a place with few secrets, a place where newcomers are not particularly welcome, a place where families have known each other for generations. And they like it that way. No, this is not a perfect novel. But it is one that I highly recommend, and one that has turned me into an S.M. Hulse fan. I can’t wait to see what she does next.
    • 5/5
      Amazing book written by a youngish woman. Hard to believe she understood and was able to write about the pain with so much empathy. Maybe the ending needed a little "fixing".
    • 4/5
      A fiddler, a prison riot, and broken relationships are the crux of this novel. I saw it classified as a “Western,” but it's a western only because it is set in Montana and there are horses and ranches in the story – not a typical western in my definition.It is a story about relationships. The characters are all flawed, some extremely so. Most are likable anyway. Even Claire, the kindest character, made a long-ago decision that had me wondering about her priorities.But the story revolves around Wes, his past and his inability to leave it behind. And although a basically good man, he has left a trail of disappointment and sorrow and anger behind him.Animals are part of the story, but it is not about animal abuse, so those who, like I, hate to read about that should be fine with this book.My only complaint is that the book sometimes seem a little too one-note, that the physical and emotional results of that prison riot, sometimes crowd out the rest of the story.Despite that nit, this is a satisfying story with terrific atmosphere and characters I cared about.I was given an advance readers copy of the book for review.