Angel's Rest

Starred review from July 10, 2006
At the start of Davis's beautifully written debut, 11-year-old Charlie York leads an idyllic life in the shadow of Angel's Rest, a mountain in the Virginia Alleghenies "so high the earth's caretakers took breaks on the peaks before they came down to help those in need of God's assistance." Then, one late afternoon in 1967, Charlie's father is killed by a shotgun blast and his mother is arrested for murder. Put in the care of Lacy Albert Coe, an old black man, Charlie hears the music of Coe's many stories as he tries to understand the hate that fills the people of rural Sunnyside, Va. Charlie vacillates between wanting to escape on a raft like Huck Finn and wanting to know the truth behind the tragedy. Was it an accident? Or was his mother guilty of murder? Or was the killer really the reclusive Korean War veteran, Hollis Thrasher, who had been seen walking from their house that afternoon? In his painful search for answers, Charlie leaves childhood behind and gains an unparalleled understanding of courage and love.