Every Cloak Rolled in Blood (A Holland Family Novel)

Broussard is quite the character as he battles evil. His thoughts and homilies make the reader think about the nature of good and evil. I started reading this the day of the Uvalde shootings and finished the next morning.

There might be words that describe the words that flow from his pen, but evasive they are to me. I've met Jim a couple of times on his book tours, and felt his calm demeanor in some brief chats. I will always be aware that something lies beneath the surface. That said, I wait for his next release, knowing that it will be as great as the last. Thanks, Jim.

James Lee Burke is my favorite writer. Since first discovering his work, I have managed to collect everything he has published with the exception of two of his early works I can't find and as I can I will replace 6 of his novels that are paperback with hardback volumes. I carry my shopping list everywhere I go! His stories are rich, real and his style of writing is classical. I can honestly "see" his characters, events and the landscapes he paints with words. When I heard this book was coming out, I pre-ordered it through Amazon (thanks for supporting great writers) and received it today. I have read it cover to cover and can honestly say it is one of his best stories! James Lee Burke is an honest man. He lays it all on the line. His personal character always shines through on the subjects in the books. His own experiences are laid bare for all to see through the actions of the people in his books. I highly recommend this book and all the others he has written.

I have been critical of recent books by JLB, principally because of the injection of supernatural elements in what is supposed to be a ‘realist’ genre. Supernatural elements are not new here; In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (1993) had such elements but they could be attributed to LSD. In Every Cloak Rolled in Blood the supernatural elements are omnipresent (though the protagonist has taken Prozac, which doesn’t cause visions and paranormal events). My ‘problem’ is with audience expectations/genre/reader response. If you are reading a realist narrative you respond to the characters and plot arcs within those constraints associated with realism. The sudden interposition of supernatural elements is jarring because you are not reading a ghost story per se, but, instead, encountering a ghost from the machine. The reader feels cheated or tricked and, most of all, confused. In the promotional material for this new novel we are told that it is very personal and ‘autobiographical’. The protagonist, Aaron Holland Broussard, is shattered by the death of his daughter Fannie Mae, an act of evil in a world of evil, more specifically a world of meth and opioid dealers, pseudo evangelists, a former Klansman, a biker gang, and so on. It is also a world with the ghosts of union soldiers who slaughtered native people (not just the memory of them, but their ghostly/physical presence). Aaron takes comfort in the presence of Ruby Spotted Horse, an officer of the law with a basement (literally) filled with ghosts. And, yes, Fannie Mae makes frequent appearances, talking to Aaron and attempting to help and direct him. The supernatural/preternatural/magic realist elements continue throughout the novel as Aaron attempts to do the right thing in his particular corner of modern Montana, but also seeks personal redemption in a vast world of past and present ghosts. Since the ghosts are central to the plot and appear throughout the novel we have a greater sense of coherence than in some of JLB’s other recent work and since JLB has himself recently lost his daughter Pamala (and is the same age as his protagonist Aaron) we catch the drift of the autobiographical element: losing a child is horrific; the emotional canvas—including a sweeping sense of past and present evil—is vast and the emotional terms automatically entail a sense of the supernatural and a desire to hold on and communicate with the lost child. In struggling with questions of genre I arrive at the conclusion that JLB’s new novel is not so much a novel as a variation of romance. Hawthorne wrote romances and Moby Dick is far more of a romance than a novel. Searching the tap roots of emotion and history, JLB searches those of American literature and makes a key reference to the western stories of A. B. Guthrie. Crime fiction, like the western, emerges from chivalric romanc...

One man's dark night of the soul, filled with remorse and self-condemnation. To quote Aaron Holland Bussard: Psychoneurotic anxiety and agitated depression coupled with an ideational personality produce a combination that is like being boiled alive. I feel like I have been boiled alive right along with him. The way he paints humanity is as brutal as he is on himself. The bar he raises is beyond reach. Toward the end he makes the claim that 'the great sin is dying before you know what your raison d'etre is'. An impossible feat for those of us who are not saints. I may admire the unsparing honesty James Lee Burke examines in himself and the world at large, and God knows the man has a gifted way with words, but maybe before I read his next book I will pound rusty nails into my own eyes instead. I'm going to go read something really silly now.... Discworld, here I come!