Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky

April 7, 2014
Leah Shepherd leads a quiet life, runs a nonprofit organization for victims of domestic violence, and generally keeps to herself in Nahm’s intriguing debut novel. But she is haunted by her past. Leah’s younger brother, Jacob, disappeared when they were both children, and his absence has defined her entire existence. While Leah struggles to keep her clients safe from abusive husbands, flashbacks of her recent past are revealed—including a broken engagement, and an inheritance from an older woman whose family accused Leah of manipulating her in order to get into the will. At every turn, the world proves itself bitter, or worse, and the inhospitable Kentucky landscape of old farms, old churches, and new poverty adds to the tone of despondency. The story moves constantly between past and present, often from one paragraph to the next, creating a nonlinear sense of time, in which Leah’s memories are both more fluid and more urgent than her day-to-day adult life of meetings and grant applications. The disjointed narrative sometimes becomes too overwhelming and too restless to keep up with, but Nahm has braided these chronologies together artfully, and the persistent shifting reflects an honest representation of Leah’s mind-set.

Starred review from May 1, 2014

It's the prose that makes this suspenseful first novel unforgettable. Like a pointillist painting, Nahm's writing daubs image upon image to construct an impressionistic view of life in a small town, the kind of place where people know everything about everyone else and yet nothing is as it seems. One chapter consists entirely of incomplete sentences that to mix metaphors amount to a crescendo of images, sometimes dreamy, sometimes nightmarish. This stream of imagery emerges from the anguished consciousness of Leah Shepard, a young woman whose normal childhood in a seemingly idyllic Kentucky town ends abruptly when her five-year-old brother Jacob disappears one Sunday morning, apparently the victim of an abduction. Now a social worker at a nonprofit in the same town--the novel slips easily between past and present--Leah remains wracked with guilt, convinced that she could have done something that day to save Jacob. And her memories are revisiting her with a vengeance as she becomes increasingly suspicious that a stranger is following her. VERDICT A powerful first novel, the kind that makes you want to stop people in the street to tell them about it. [See "Galley Guide Discoveries," 1/19/14.]--Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA

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