Jeremiah Goodbye could be described as a lucky guy. Jeremiah himself, however, would say that it’s fate. It’s clear from the beginning of James Markert’s What Blooms from Dust that something is looking out for Jeremiah. The novel opens just after Jeremiah escaped from prison (thanks for a tornado) after being electrocuted for five seconds at his execution. He’s got a job to do. The problem is that he doesn’t quite know what that job is.
Jeremiah is called the Coin-Flip Killer. He was caught burying bodies at the Nowhere, Oklahoma silo, but there is some question about whether or not Jeremiah actually killed four men. At the beginning of What Blooms from Dust, though, Jeremiah seems like a hardbitten man—not surprising considering it was a miracle that he escaped from his own execution in the spring of 1935. Our first hint that Jeremiah might just be misunderstood comes when he rescues a boy (described as “not right” by his parents) from being sold to a stranger. The stranger gives off a bad vibe and Jeremiah just can’t walk past. So, after intimidating the stranger, Jeremiah and the boy, Peter, walk to Nowhere.
Even after Jeremiah and Peter arrive in Nowhere, Jeremiah has no idea what he’s supposed to do. He can’t hide. Everyone knows who he is and his own twin brother was the one who turned him in. He’s not really trying to exonerate himself. He doesn’t have a lot of time to figure out what to do with himself when a series of dust storms, including the terrible Black Sunday storm, hits the town and strange things start to happen. The storm catches most of the town outside and the dust does weird things to almost everyone who breathed it in. It’s only in the worst days after the storm that Jeremiah and Peter learn what they’re supposed to do.
The Dust Bowl becomes a malevolent force in What Blooms from Dust. It wasn’t much different in reality, I suspect. The constant dust storms on top of a decade of drought and economic depression must have broken people. No wonder that so many people from Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas packed up and took to the roads just to get away with it. This book is full of references to digging out from yet another storm that I got tired and I was just laying on the couch.
Readers who don’t like essential coincidences might not like What Blooms from Dust. Readers like me who love watching seemingly disparate events and clues come together to create a marvelous ending or who enjoy atmospheric novels that put you right in the setting will enjoy this book. There is so much to enjoy about this unsettling tale of fate and good and evil.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. It will be released 26 June 2018.
“Readers who don’t like essential coincidences might not like What Blooms from Dust.” Still, this sounds good — I might give it a shot!