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Published Jan 2012
336 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Most of the wealth in Dove Creek, West Virginia, is in the earth - in the coal seams that have provided generations with a way of life. Born and raised here, twenty-seven-year-old Cole Freeman has sidestepped work as a miner to become an aide in a nursing home. He's got a shock of bleached blond hair and a gentle touch well suited to the job. He's also a drug dealer, reselling the prescription drugs his older patients give him to a younger crowd looking for different kinds of escape.
In this economically depressed, shifting landscape, Cole is floundering. The mining corporation is angling to buy the Freeman family's property, and Cole's protests only feel like stalling. Although he has often dreamed of leaving, he has a sense of duty to this land, especially after the death of his grandfather. His grandfather is not the only loss: Cole's one close friend, Terry Rose, has also slipped away from him, first to marriage, then to drugs. While Cole alternately attempts romance with two troubled women, he spends most of his time with the elderly patients at the home, desperately trying to ignore the decay of everything and everyone around him. Only when a disaster befalls these mountains is Cole forced to confront his fears and, finally, take decisive action - if not to save his world, to at least save himself.
The Evening Hour marks the powerful debut of a writer who brings originality, nuance, and an incredible talent for character to an iconic American landscape in the throes of change.
Paperback original
"A plainspoken novel, but one with intensely lyrical moments... Sickels has great insight into the emotional life of West Virginians, and he refreshingly presents them as fully realized characters." - Kirkus Reviews
"Isolated and economically depressed, the Appalachia portrayed here is not new, but Cole's point of view is not one often encountered in contemporary fiction. First-time novelist Sickels paints Cole's experience with an unflinching hand." - Library Journal
"Sickels's debut revolves around a cast of characters whose world is pulled out from under them... The novel is grounded in rich storytelling." - Publishers Weekly
"In this stark, beautiful debut, Sickels writes with gentle grace and cutting honesty about characters as wounded as the condemned land on which they live. The Evening Hour is a raw, aching book that gleams with moments of unflinching truth and unexpected tenderness, casting light into dark corners, revealing both damage and dignity. It's a stunning novel." - Aryn Kyle, author of The God of Animals and Boys and Girls Like You and Me
"The troubled heart of the country, and the hearts of the deeply compelling people who populate it, beat strongly and unforgettably in The Evening Hour. Carter Sickels is a tremendous novelist with a tremendous story to tell in these pages, and he tells it with beauty and power.” - Stacey D'Erasmo, author of The Sky Below
This information about The Evening Hour was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Carter Sickels, a graduate of the MFA program at Pennsylvania State University, was awarded fellowships to Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the MacDowell Colony. After living for a decade in New York City, Sickels left to earn a master's degree in folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He now lives in Portland, Oregon.
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