In the Course of Human Events

Starred review from February 3, 2014
In his debut novel, former PW deputy reviews editor Harvkey heats incendiary current events to their boiling point, drawing on his own upbringing in meth-ridden northwest Missouri and his black belt in Kyokushin, a form of karate, to examine a young man’s life in Winter’s Bone territory. Twenty-year-old Clyde Twitty—who landed a factory job while still in high school, only to lose it a few years later—has a lot on his mind: his gig driving cars to auction brings in only $40 per week; his mother depends on Clyde’s support to pay her mortgage and maintain her hairstyling business, and he helps his handicapped uncle as well; and his best friend is in Nashville, a world away from Clyde’s hometown of Strasburg, Mo. But Clyde suddenly discovers a sense of purpose when he meets Jay Smalls, a self-styled karate warrior, whose stomach is as hard as his ultra-right-wing political beliefs. Smalls and his family—including his daughter, underage seductress Tina—make short work of indoctrinating Clyde. Soon his “training” pulls him into the so-called patriot movement: he attends Aryan conventions, reads literature like The Turner Diaries, and declares himself, in far-right legal parlance, a “non-resident, non-foreigner stranger to the current state of the forum.” Harvkey skillfully shows how Clyde’s conscience gives way to his desire for meaningful work and connections; as they say, idle hands are the devil’s workshop. As a conspiracy with nation-rocking potential takes shape, Harvkey pushes this eerie, engrossing satire to its bloody conclusion. It’s a provocative, unflinching look at the hate that poverty has fomented in places like Strasburg—“the town the American Dream forgot.” Agent: Bill Clegg, WME Entertainment.

February 1, 2014
For his debut novel, Harvkey gathers together an odd band of malcontents and down-on-their-luck types in this tale of a man who believes he has run out of options and the people who offer him one. Clyde Twitty is a man on the downswing. He's lost a job and most of his pride and lives with his elderly mother in a depressed area of Missouri. The day-to-day struggle of trying to hold on to their little home, which is also the base of his mother's beauty salon business, has left the young man as worn and disillusioned as his old uncle Willie, who lives in a mobile home with his ancient dog. But then Clyde meets the Smalls family: patriarch Jay, an odd man with a pushy personality; Jan, his big-busted wife; and Tina Louise, their teenage daughter. Jay bullies Clyde into learning karate from him, and Tina makes him her lover, quickly integrating the impressionable Clyde into their large clan of cousins and followers. But there is more to the Smalls than meets the eye, and it's not simply the fact that Tina Louise sells Amway. They've launched a war on everyone they consider an enemy, and in their book, a lot of people and groups fall into that category. Soon, Clyde is knee-deep in violence, and there's no looking back, and what he finds out about himself, and the subsequent direction his life takes, is fodder for Harvkey's pen. Harvkey is clearly a talented writer, but his subject matter is disheartening. Not everyone will want to climb inside the head of someone as clearly out of control as Jay Smalls, and those who do might find the story more depressing than the reality upon which it is based. Well-written, but readers will struggle to care about the fates of Clyde, the Smalls or any of the other characters.

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