“The smell would have been there on the way back, too. It is the one constant. It connects two things in Ann’s mind that she can’t manage to connect otherwise—the drive up the mountain and the drive back down. The drive back down is the part Ann comes here to try to understand.” - from p. 6 of Idaho, by Emily Ruskovich
Published in 2017, Emily Ruskovich’s debut novel Idaho is a bit older than the other books I’ve reviewed so far. As I was deep into my first and second years of teaching high school in 2017, I wasn’t paying as much attention to new books and only recently discovered this beautifully written, slow-burn literary thriller. (I realize some of these words typically don’t go together, and the “thriller” element admittedly tapers off to more of a character study by the second half.)
Set in rural Idaho, the novel circles the mystery of a baffling and horrifying murder of a child through multiple perspectives and many leaps in time, with crystalline prose and psychologically nuanced character development. There is also a significant subplot involving a love story through the trials of dementia against the backdrop of this central traumatic event.
Though I’m not the first to point this out, the book is evocative of Marilynne Robinson’s 1980 novel Housekeeping, which is also set in Idaho: deeply rooted in place, slowly paced, and gorgeously written. Ruskovich knows Idaho deeply—she grew up on a mountain much like the one featured in the book—and the descriptions make clear its combination of raw beauty and danger.
Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible also comes to mind as a touchstone, primarily for the general plot echo of characters trying to come to terms with the unexpected and violent death of a child. Like Kingsolver, Ruskovich fully and richly develops multiple characters’ perspectives and weaves smaller arcs to complement and extend the story well beyond its central mystery. These character studies and subplots provide smaller resolutions that help make the book satisfying even if the motives for the murder are never fully explained.
I did long for a chapter from the surviving sister’s perspective; in many ways, the book felt set up for that, and it was the one hole in the story I was less willing to forgive.
Suffice to say, if you prefer a page-turner and tidy resolution, you will be disappointed beyond the first few chapters. But if you have the patience for its heavy subject matter and quieter approach to plot, you’ll likely enjoy this haunting, lyrical novel.