The Caretaker

The potent and rewarding latest from Rash (The Risen) centers on a Southern man whose simple life is challenged by the tenets of loyalty, friendship, family, and honesty. Blackburn Gant is a solitary man, scarred by a battle with childhood polio and left behind in Blowing Rock, N.C., by his family, who have settled in Florida. In 1951, Blackburn becomes the town’s hilltop cemetery caretaker after the pastor offers him the position. His caretaking duties grow more serious, when his best friend Jacob Hampton, son of a prominent local family, is drafted into the Korean War and leaves his teenage wife, Naomi—uneducated, friendless, and pregnant—in Blackburn’s care until he returns. When Jacob met and hurriedly eloped with Naomi, his family disinherited him and, while generous to the townsfolk through their storekeeping business, they refuse to offer her any aid. After a sketchy encounter with Jacob’s irate father during her final trimester, Naomi returns home to Tennessee. When Jacob is medically discharged after a combat injury and returns to Blowing Rock, his parents manipulate the grim situation into an opportunity to rid the family of Naomi and her child forever. Rash expertly and seamlessly ratchets up the suspense and melodrama as both sides of this family feud seek their own version of justice with Blackburn caught up in the maelstrom. The lyrically nuanced prose faithfully evokes the Appalachian landscape, and Rash again showcases an ability to dig beneath the surface of his characters to expose their base desires and intentions. This is exactly the kind of humanitarian storytelling that fans have come to expect and savor from him. (Sept.)