The People of the Broken Neck

by Silas Dent Zobal

Overview

From the woods where he hides with his nearly grown son Clarke and his young daughter King, ex-Army Ranger Dominick Sawyer watches Agent Charlie Basin’s flashlight beam bounce on the walls inside his cabin. Dom’s wife is missing. His post-trauma hallucinations rip at him explosively and bring him to his knees. And a local deputy sheriff is dead. When the FBI agents recede into the night, the Sawyers begin to run, across the country in stolen trucks, leaving a trail of blood behind them. Together with a young girl they pick up on the road, they hope to run until they find a peaceable place in the American Northwest.

But Agent Basin sees his own troubled family reflected in Dom’s haunted existence, and his pursuit is relentless.

All any of them want is to spirit King away to someplace safe.

All she wants is not to be afraid of her father and to find out why her mother disappeared.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609531348
Publisher:	Unbridled Books
Publication date:	10/11/2016
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Silas Dent Zobal is the author of a collection of stories, The Inconvenience of the Wings. His debut novel, The People of the Broken Neck, is forthcoming from Unbridled Books. He has published short fiction in the Missouri Review, Glimmer Train, New Orleans Review, North American Review, Green Mountain Review, Shenandoah, Wisconsin Review, and elsewhere. He has won the Glimmer Train Fiction Open, been a scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and been awarded a fiction fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Harrisburg, PA.

Interviews

"Silas Dent Zobal has written an exquisitely rare novel, at once a page-turning thriller and a meticulously crafted work of literary art.” — North American Review

Editorial Reviews

A searing debut novel: terse sentences juxtaposed with ambiguous, surreal descriptions of violence and the after-effects of trauma. … A literary thriller somewhere between Phil Klay and Dennis Lehane.” — Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions

From the Publisher

★ 08/29/2016
Zobal follows 2015’s The Inconvenience of the Wings, a short story collection, with a tour de force of a debut novel, which blends elements of mainstream thriller, noir fiction, preternatural mystery, and travelogue. Dominick Sawyer, a former Army Ranger and veteran of the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars, returns to his family in rural Pennsylvania a changed man, plagued by post-traumatic hallucinations. When his wife disappears, Sawyer goes on the run with his kids—15-year-old Clarke and 11-year-old Kingsley—in a desperate attempt to somehow keep the family together. Veteran FBI agent Charlie Basin is tasked with apprehending the dangerous fugitive, who’s wanted for the shooting death of a Pennsylvania sheriff, but his mission becomes complicated when Basin, the father of two, begins understanding the war hero’s motives and identifying with his plight. Powered by rich imagery, darkly lyrical prose, and a deeply philosophical undertone, this novel explores the nature of family—particularly when those familial bonds begin breaking—with profoundly moving conclusions. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

2016-08-03
In his debut novel, Zobal (The Inconvenience of the Wings, 2015) casts an empathetic eye on the unraveling of a good man, soul-damaged by war, who attempts to reclaim his home and family.Dominick Clarke Sawyer was a U.S. Army Ranger who saw combat action in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan while his wife, Sarah, 15-year-old son, Clarke, and preteen daughter, Kingsley, remained at home in Pennsylvania. But there were ever increasing stress, uncertainties, and, later, vicious arguments when he returned home between deployments. On his last furlough, Dom awakes to find Sarah gone. He tells his children their mother will be away for a while, but soon child welfare services gets involved. The deputy sheriff is sent to visit Dom, and then he too disappears. That brings in the FBI, who only find Dom and his children gone. In strobe-light-flash chapters, Zobal follows the physically imposing, stoic, yet deeply emotional Dom as he shepherds his brood from Pennsylvania to Maine (a beautifully rendered seashore idyll) to Illinois (where an emotionally damaged girl joins them, adding a new perspective), and finally to Washington state, where Dom finds that one more pillar on which he’s built his life has collapsed. Zobal’s narrative is a powerful dissection of the damage war inflicts on soldiers and families alike. Dom is a flawed hero, but he’s portrayed with cleareyed empathy. Clarke is Dom unformed, worried, protective of his sister; Kingsley embodies fearfulness, tears, and pain yet she keeps her heart open to love. The novel is made far better by having FBI agent Charlie Basin as a second protagonist. Charlie has struggled with his inability to fully relate to his depressed college-age daughter, a struggle he sometimes sees reflected in Dom's ongoing tragedy. Zobal reveals himself to be a writer of distinctive power, especially with immersions into Dom’s fugue states and often impressionistic descriptions—"a pale fog began to gather against the ground and catch at the edges of things." A powerful, moving allegory that reflects how post–9/11 missteps scarred the American soul.

Kirkus Review

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