Sometimes a book can leave such an impression that is difficult to express exactly at what point it became more than just a good read. It's hard to believe this is the first novel from Chris Harding Thornton. It builds as if you are there, standing off to the side, watching as each character's day unfolds. You feel the emotions and the frustration on a personal level. It just pulled me in and I became invested in this story. This is the reading experience that only comes along once in awhile. Read it for yourself, it's well worth your limited reading time.

This is a well written story that only covers a few days in the life of a small town that is slowly dying. A young boy was murdered 25 years before and his father has decided to hold a funeral and erect a marker for him even though his body has never been found. This starts a very sad, very unhappy series of events. There were really no characters that I would say were likeable, but the story is worth reading. Just don't expect any fairy tale endings.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC of Pickard County Atlas.

Chris Harding Thornton’s first novel could best be described as a slow burn that escalates to a big fire in the last quarter of the book.

I tend to read a lot of books set in the Northeast, the United Kingdom and Canada. What drew me to this book was its timeline - 6 days in 1979 - and its setting - Nebraska.

Although the plot is simple - a sheriff vs. the family whose murdered son was never found - the characters are compelling and the setting is wonderfully present as another character.

I’m judging a 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

“Above the wild rye and volunteer ash saplings hovered the dusty bumper of a red
F-250.
Paul Reddick. “

Pickled County Atlas is an Entertaining grit lit novel. Quite a few narrative threads going here. Clever twists and turns.

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux/MCD on January 5, 2021

The protagonist of Pickard County Atlas believes that people who respond to adversity either overcome or succumb. Adversity is a way of life for the characters in Chris Harding Thornton's debut novel. The story makes clear that people who base rash actions on incomplete evidence are likely to do harm. Rash actions and misunderstandings are the default behavior of Thornton's characters.

When Dell Reddick Jr. was seven, a farmhand killed him. The farmhand called the sheriff’s office, confessed, and killed himself. Dell Junior’s body was never found and the Reddick family has never overcome the tragedy. Dell Senior’s wife Virginia has made a habit of disrobing outside and setting fire to her clothes for reasons of her own. Dell Senior moved out and left his younger sons, Rick and Paul, to act as their mother’s caretakers. Now that they are older, Rick and Paul work for their father, buying and restoring trailers. They always hope to find a double wide so they can make some decent money.

Harley Jensen is a deputy sheriff. He spends his nights patrolling the county roads, occasionally interrupting teens making out on property that isn’t their own. Many of the houses in the county are empty and abandoned, including the house in which Harley grew up. Some of them have been torched by parties unknown.

Harley has had some run-ins with Paul Reddick over the years, beginning when he tried to have Paul committed after Paul climbed a water tower and acted like he was going to shoot people or himself. Paul seems to resent Harley’s failure to find Dell Junior’s body. Paul recently seems to be hanging out at Harley’s childhood home. Harley finds him there on one occasion with a girl who is too young for Paul, at least in Harley’s judgment.

While Harley is driving around at night, brooding about the past, he stumbles upon Rick Reddick’s wife, Pam, in whom Harley takes an interest that is not entirely professional. Pam isn’t happy with her hand-to-mouth existence. She fantasizes about running off, leaving her daughter with Rick. Her tendency to drive around at night in support of her fantasies leads Rick to a mistaken conclusion about Pam’s nighttime actions — or rather, he’s mistaken about the person she’s meeting. That mistake leads to some of the novel’s tension.

To the extent that it is possible to bring Nebraska to life (Nebraska is the only state in which I watched a weather report that took up the majority of the local news broadcast on a cloudless summer day), Chris Harding Thornton does so. He creates a rural midwestern atmosphere that captures the emptiness and desolation of both the landscape and the county’s inhabitants. Thornton’s prose is fluid and sharp without ever becoming self-consciously literary. Readers who crave likable characters won’t find any here, but the characters are unlikeable precisely because they are so realistic.

The themes of “brother against brother” and “small town secrets” have been done before but writers return to those themes because they speak to readers. The dark ending seems a bit forced, as do some of the interactions between characters, but Thornton’s ability to create gritty scenes that transfix a reader makes Pickard County Atlas a solid first novel.

RECOMMENDED

This debut novel from Thornton is an outstanding example of contemporary noir at its best. From the first sentence this book grabs the reader and never lets go as Thornton brilliantly uses the wide open landscape of Nebraska to craft this story of mystery, loss, and tragedy. It is an entertaining book with a prose style and themes that announce that Thornton’s voice is not only unique but a refreshing and welcome addition to contemporary literary and crime fiction.

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

In a town with "three dozen jobs, give or take," the history of each Madson, Neb., homestead permeates the land and its denizens. Deputy Harley Jensen patrols every night, "absently tick[ing] off names of passing tracts like reading a plat map in an old atlas." The events at his abandoned childhood farmhouse are inescapable, often reflected in the eyes or words of his community, and Harley always speeds past. But as Chris Harding Thornton's dark and brilliant debut, Pickard County Atlas, opens, Harley pulls in and finds Paul Reddick there.

The Reddicks were scarred by a 1960 tragedy that remains part mystery. Paul, then four, remembers his family only as broken. In the 18 years since, he's been involved in numerous violent events and run-ins with Harley, who likens him to a bad penny, though "you turn up often enough--wrong place, wrong time--you seem less like an omen than a reason."

Thornton immediately sets a country noirish stage, dropping clues that smolder through the pages as she reveals each family's past. Paul's parents are long-divorced and shells of their former selves. Brother Rick is married with a young daughter, his family a tinderbox of desperation. Though the plot appears male-centric, the women are its true, complex heart. Thornton's expert prose and turns of phrase beg for repeat reading ("cooked like those hobos her mother once told her had roasted in a freight car") and the character work is full of depth and detail that astonish; a dazzling display of literary prowess.

Tana French described this novel as “a slow-burning beauty” and I can’t think of a more apt description. For one, the writing is absolutely stunning on a sentence level, so you’ll ease into the wreckage of the story while savoring each and every word. Add to that the sleepy yet menacing nature of the setting, the rusty hills of Nebraska and the lull continues. Finally, mix in several lives that seem to be moving backward and you have the “slow-burning” stew that Ms. French forebode. Sheriff Deputy Harley Jensen, haunted Reddick brothers Paul and Rick, and Pam, Rick’s desperate housewife. These characters’ lives will collide with devastating effect. I’m anxious to see what Chris Harding Thornton conjures up next. This is top-notch crime fiction.

Small town intrigue is always captivating. This book kept me guessing what was coming with a barrage of subplots. Good story, but I felt that something was missing. I kept thinking it was going to get better as I read, but for some reason it didn't feel as genuine as it could have. Still.. definitely worth a read, good but not great.

PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS
Chris Harding Thornton
MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN-13: 978-0-374-72239-5
Hardcover
Thriller/Rural Noir

PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS was the last book I picked up to read in 2020 and the first one I finished in 2021. It was a terrific way to end one year and begin a new one, not only due to the quality in equal parts of the plotting and the writing but also for the oft-encountered thrill experience --- one that never gets old --- of discovering an (almost) newly published author for the first time, who on this occasion is Chris Harding Thornton. She is now on my must-read list.

Thornton is by her own description a seventh-generation Nebraskan whose day gig is a professorship at the University of Nebraska, the institution where she acquired her Ph.D. PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS is her debut novel --- she has also published a very limited collection of short stories --- and the 1978 Nebraskan setting of the book is as far removed from the ivy halls of academia as might be possible. Such makes the reality of Thornton’s sure-footed narrative and characterization seemingly unlikely until one considers the vocational background which preceded her considerable scholarly accomplishments and which make them, and this work, all the more remarkable.

But let’s get to the novel. The Pickard County of the title is a fictitious but all-too-real location where hardscrabble poverty is a mindnumbing reality for many. The king of the hill as a result is Dell Reddick, whose family business is repairing or repurposing house trailers depending in large part but not entirely on their condition. He is aided in this endeavor by his sons Rick and Paul. The memory of their deceased older brother, Dell Junior, hangs over the family and casts a dark, tragic shadow. Dell Jr. was killed when he was seven years of age by a disturbed individual who readily confessed to what he had done befor himself. The problem is that he never told anyone what he did with Dell Jr.’s corpse. Dell Sr. as PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS begins is conducting a funeral for his dead son some seventeen years later, a ceremony without a body. Rather than providing closure, the event further tears open emotional wounds that have never healed, particularly for Virginia, Dell Jr.’s mother. Rick, meanwhile, seems to capable of doing more than working at substandard wages for his father but does not have the fortitude to do so. This is a situation that chafes at Pam, Rick’s wife, who vaguely envisions a life far away from her parents, her husband, and their three-year-old daughter. Harley Jensen, the local deputy sheriff, has been a native of Pickard County for almost five decades and is well-settled into his twelve- to fourteen-hour nightshifts other than for the occasional run-in with Paul Reddick, a lost soul who seems to be at or near whatever trouble occurs in the county. When Virginia goes missing after the funeral Harley’s patrols become more intense, a situation which leads him into a chance encounter with Pam, whose restless nighttime wanderings will cause a chain reaction of consequences beginning in her own home and radiating outward. One can foresee some but not all of the results, which continue to play out into the last page of PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS, and beyond.

Thornton is reportedly working on her next novel, and it cannot come soon enough for me. My copy of PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS is well-highlighted over Thornton’s numerous and wonderful turns-of-phrase and descriptions which beg to be re-read until her next offering appears. There certainly seems to be enough potential for additional tales and trouble in her fictional Nebraska county to fill several more novels. Anyone who reads PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS will undoubtedly want to see if that is true. Strongly recommended.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
© Copyright 2021, The Book Report, Inc. All rights reserved.

What a way to start off the new year! Chris Harding Thornton has written one of those debut novels, the sort that makes an author reluctant to publish a second book, lest it fail to live up to the first. Lucky me, I read it free; thanks go to Net Galley and Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. It’s for sale tomorrow, and those that love excellent working class fiction should get a copy right away.

The setting is rural Nebraska, for a single week in 1978. It’s one of those tiny towns where not only does everyone know everyone else, but also just about every single thing that has happened in the lives of everyone else. Or at least they think they do; gossip takes on a life of its own. We have three protagonists, and their points of view alternate, always in the third person omniscient. Harley Jensen, the deputy sheriff, opens the story; then we meet Pam Reddick, a miserable, trapped, 24 year old housewife living in a singlewide trailer with her baby and a husband who’s always working; and Rick, the man Pam is married to, who works for his father, buying and renovating old mobile homes. Now there’s a job for you.

Both of the men, Harley and Rick, are leading lives of avoidance. As a child, Harley found his mother on the kitchen floor after she blew her own face away with a shotgun. The table was set, and the gravy was just beginning to form a skin on top. Gravy boat; bare, dirty feet facing the door after she fell over; cane bottom chair, shotgun, and…yeah. So now Harley is middle aged, single, childless; he maintains a careful distance emotionally from everyone. He does his job, but he’s no Joe Friday. He maintains a stoic, lowkey demeanor most of the time, putting one foot in front of the other, so that people won’t look at him with pity, which is intolerable: .

People evidently needed that. They needed to know that you could overcome a thing like
what happened here and keep going. That or you were just broken—more broken than they’d ever be.
That worked fine, too. The one thing they couldn’t abide was that you just lived with it. You drank and slept
and did laundry with it. You waited at the DMV and clocked in and out with it.

The opening scene in which we meet Harley finds him driving his usual patrol, eager to pass the last homestead he routinely checks for prowlers, vandals, or partiers. It is his parents’ home, now derelict and unsaleable. He prefers to zip past it, but he can’t today because there’s a truck down there. Turns out to be Paul Reddick, the wily, sociopathic brother of Rick, whom we’ve yet to meet. This scene is as tense and still as the air right before the tornado hits. It’s suffused with dread, and we don’t fully understand why yet. It sets the tone for the rest of the story.

Pam Reddick is too young to be so bitter, but it isn’t stopping her. She doesn’t love her husband, and if she ever did, we don’t see evidence of it. They are married because of Anna, their now-three-year-old daughter. This fact gives me pause, since Roe v. Wade came down in 1973; abortion is legal. But then I realize, first, that the Supreme Court made a ruling, but it didn’t furnish clinics, and an out-of-the-way place like Pickard County may never have had access. Pam and Rick have so little money that a trip to the nearest clinic and the payment for the procedure was about as likely as an all expense paid trip to Europe. No, she’d have that baby all right. And she has. But she has no enthusiasm for parenting or her daughter, who looks just like her daddy. Pam goes through the barest motions of motherhood, and only that much because her mother and her mother’s friends always seem to be watching.

Rick, on the other hand, is a guy you can’t help but feel sorry for. The entire Reddick family is a mess. Their father, who is a shyster, has more or less abandoned their mother, who has mental health problems, the severity of which depends on who is talking. The whole town knows about the night when, following the murder of her eldest son, she was seen in the backyard, stark naked, burning clothing in a barrel. His younger brother, Paul, whom we met earlier with Harley, uses street drugs and steals his mother’s prescriptions; he’s been in and out of trouble most of his life. Worse still, perhaps, is the fact—and it isn’t spelled out for us, but as the narrative unfolds, it becomes evident—that Paul is smarter than Rick. Nobody tells us Rick is stupid; rather, his inner monologue fixates on the mundane and tends to turn in circles. And here, we can see also that poor Rick loves Pam and Anna deeply, and considers them the very best part of his young life; he counsels Paul to settle down, find someone like Pam so that he can have a good life, too. And while Rick knows that Pam is unhappy, he tells himself that she’s mad about nothing, that she’ll settle down. He’s working hard, and we can see that; the guy is a slob, but he’s industrious, on his back in the dirt ripping fiberglass out of an old trailer, stripping wallpaper, replacing pipes. And when he goes home, exhausted and reeking, his feet are sore and itching, and the thing he finds most soothing, and which makes Pam crazy, is rubbing his feet on the radiator until pieces of dead skin come off in strips, which he of course doesn’t clean up.

At this point, I’m ready to get my purse out and give Pam some get-away cash. I couldn’t live that way, either. The worst of it is that Rick is already doing his very best.

The plot unfolds like a burning tumbleweed descending a dry hillside, and it is masterfully written. Much of its brilliance lies in what is not said. There are probably half a dozen themes that bear study, for those so inclined. The violence and poverty are obvious, but more insidious is the way this county chews up the women that live there.

Another admirable aspect of the narrative is the restraint with which cultural artifacts are placed. We aren’t barraged with the headlines of 1978, or its music or movie actors. Thornton doesn’t take cheap shortcuts. Yet there are occasional subtle reminders: the television’s rabbit ears that have to be adjusted to get a decent picture; the Corelle casserole dish.

So, is this book worth your hard-earned money? If you haven’t figured that out by now, you’re no brighter than poor Rick. Go get this book now. Your own troubles will all look smaller when you’re done.

Pickard County Atlas is a great title for this debut by a very gifted writer. Set in a small town with all the interwoven histories simmering very close to the surface, the memory of the murder of a seven-year-old boy 18 years earlier causes emotions to erupt. Gotta say that for a relatively small place, there is a lot of toxicity going on here. Chris Thornton's powers of description are acute, life in a trailer park is brought vividly to life. I look forward to what comes next.

Pickard County Atlas by Chris Harding Thornton is a very highly recommended rural noir that focuses on past traumas amid the insular nature of a small town.

It is 1978 in a dusty town in the north central sandhills of Pickard County, Nebraska. Sheriff’s deputy Harley Jensen is on night patrol where he follows a routine as he cruises the area and checks on the empty farmsteads located throughout the county. He also keeps an eye out for Paul Reddick, a young man who always seems to be involved in trouble of one kind or another. In an attempt to bring some kind of closure after eighteen years, Dell Reddick Sr. has just made the decision to place a headstone over an empty grave for Dell Jr. who was killed in 1960 at the age of seven by a farmhand. Then the man committed suicide before he could tell people where he buried the boy and the body was never found. After this tragedy, the Reddick family has struggled. Virginia Reddick, Dell Jr.'s mother, withdrew into her own world and is said to be crazy. Rick Reddick is trying the best he can but his wife, Pam feels trapped and wants to escape from him, the constant struggle for money, and raising their three year old daughter.

Harley Jensen has a past trauma that other's in the county know well. In 1938 his mother committed suicide when he was young and the house where it happened is one of the abandoned farm houses on his regular patrol route. Harley is still traumatized by this, but can hide his emotions as a part of his job. The novel unfolds during six oppressively sweltering days and begins when Harley is on patrol and passes by his family's old house, he sees Paul Reddick's truck parked there and turns into the drive to see what trouble the youngest Reddick is up to now.

Pickard County Atlas is a wonderful example of rural noir and highlights the small town gossip and stories that can follow a family for generations. The slow start, while requiring some patience, eventually pays off and allows the tension to gradually build while the characters are introduced and their struggles with life are presented. As each new days unfolds, we become privy to the characters disclosing another incident, another misunderstanding, another enigma, another question, another deduction, another secret. As each new piece of information is added and builds upon the previous revelations, the novel becomes increasingly compelling, hopeless, and complex. The characters are well developed, and, although not especially likable, they are realistic as they head toward what seems a predestined fate. The quality of the writing and prose is excellent, making this an impressive debut novel.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
After publication the review will be posted on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Strous and Giroux for this advance reader's copy of Pickard County Atlas by Chris Harding Thornton.

When I read that this book was being reviewed as noir I was hesitant. I'm not a fan of noir, at least not in the traditional sense. If Pickard County Atlas is considered noir I may have to change my opinion because this book blew me away. This is the story of a small town in a rural area and how long ago tragedies never really stop haunting the ones closest to them. The story is focused on four main characters; Harley, Pam, Rick and Paul and how relationships can be misunderstood.

If you have ever lived in a rural area you will be able to picture this book like it's happening in real life. The writing is impeccable. The characters are extremely well fleshed out, to the point that if they ever make it a movie people will argue about who should be cast based on their own imagined versions. Pickard County Atlas is going to be one of the books that makes it on all of the best books of the year lists in 2021. Don't miss it.

Described as a rural noir, Pickard County Atlas depicts the aftermath of tragedy and a family apparently rocketing toward another. Eighteen years ago, a child was killed and his body never found. His mother has withdrawn into her own world, her remaining sons have never learned to cope with either the tragedy of the past or their current lives. The father, although he provides economic support., deserted his wife and seems to have failed his sons. Now the mother is missing, the middle son is struggling to provide for his family, and the youngest son seems bent on destruction, either his own or that of those around him.

Deputy Harley Jensen, patrolling the night roads of Pickard County, is also haunted by a tragedy in his own childhood. For years he has watched the Reddick family's youngest son ricochet from one disaster to the next, never quite legally culpable but nonetheless a catalyst. A chance encounter with the wife of the middle Reddick son further entwines their lives.

Heartbreaking, but at the same time depicting the resilience of rural and small town residents. I was astounded to learn that this was the author's first novel. Much gratitude to NetGalley and MCD (a new division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux) for the opportunity to read the eARC in return for an honest review.

A slow burn debut crime novel much in the way of Laura McHugh’s novels. Bleak gut punching. Yet propulsive and thrilling. Highly recommended.

I read Pickard County Atlas in a fury, addicted to the suspense and completely immersed in the dry, desolate small town of Madson. I read all the way to the very end of the author's note, and when I saw that this is Chris Harding Thornton's first novel, I actually gasped out loud, "How is this her DEBUT novel???"

PCA gets a full 5 stars from me. I loved it. It's a dark, simmering country drama that is achingly twisted. The characters are so broken, their stories painful and burning. Somehow in this novel of average length, the author managed the perfect amount of backstory for the characters as well as the setting. The chilling backstory settles around like a low fog, present but not blinding, as the reader wades through the suspense and darkness of the present. We follow Pam, Paul, Rick, and Harley as they tangle and chafe in each other's desperate lives.

The pacing is perfect. It's written in my favorite multiple narrator - third person POV with the constant action and movement that makes a longish book feel fast and hard to put down even as real life begs for attention. The writing is so polished, reflective, emotional, clear, and descriptive that it disappeared, and I simply existed in the story as it unfolded.

In the summer of 1978 the Reddick family has been grieving the loss of seven-year-old Dell Jr. for 18 years. His mama Virginia has never gotten over the fact that his body was never found and is upset to learn her estranged husband has finally filed paperwork to declare him legally dead and held a service with no body to lay to rest. Dell Jr.’s brothers, Rick and Paul, have lived their lives in the shadow his absence has cast.

Now Virginia has left without a word and Paul claims he’s not worried; she’s just out looking for Dell Jr.’s body.
Meanwhile, Rick is working to keep food on the table for his family. His wife Pam is unhappy with the choices she’s made and is struggling with her marriage, motherhood, and lack of options.

Just down the road, Pickard County deputy Harley Jensen is investigating some strange incidents in their small town. Abandoned farmhouses are going up in flames, homes are being broken in to during funerals and random items stolen. Jensen himself knows about loss; his mama took her own life when he was just a kid.
Something about the Reddicks, Paul in particular, crawls under his skin and he’s focused on catching him in the act. However, he loses his focus when he meets Pam for the first time, setting off a chain of events that began long before the summer of ’78.

A fine piece of rural noir, Pickard County Atlas has a strong cast of characters and this gripping story gives readers a look into the effects of trauma in a small Nebraska town. I recommend this book to readers who enjoy crime, grit lit / rural noir, and family dramas.
Thanks to NetGalley and FSGxMCD for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. Pickard County Atlas is scheduled for release on January 5, 2021.

An excellent character study of traumatic life events and how they affect two families in small town. The author does an excellent job of weaving the past and present between the intertwining characters that sets them on their course, for better or worse.. I normally don't go for this genre, but definitely enjoyed this one and read it in a couple days. The people felt real, could relate to them and feel their frustration. Their situation was not the norm, but not so far out of the norm that it couldn't be reality. An author to watch!