Eden Mine by S.M. Hulse

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on February 11, 2020

Eden Mine is the story of two siblings, troubled in their separate ways, who are bound by a traumatic childhood event and the secrets they keep. Samuel planned to leave Prospect, his childhood home in Montana, to join the military with his friend Kev, and then to pursue a career as a veterinarian. After the traumatic event left Jo in a wheelchair, he abandoned his dreams so he could drive her to school and keep her safe. Apart from Jo, his only real attachment is to their inherited land, but the government is about to take their house so a highway can run through the property.

Samuel is seduced by militia groups that preach the sovereignty of haters rather than the unity of all, and by fringe websites that spew senseless conspiracy theories. He hates the government. He hates Jews. He believes people are better off “keeping to their own kind.” Jo reminds him that all the people responsible for their losses are, in fact, “their own kind.” Clouded by hatred and helplessness, Samuel plants an explosive in a courthouse, hoping to make a political statement but critically injuring a little girl in a storefront church across the street.

Jo never wanted to leave Prospect because she loves “the way the mountains cleave the sky, and the valley cradles its people.” She knows the land is poisoned and businesses are failing, but the beauty keeps her rooted. The losing fight against eminent domain is the force that threatens to uproot her. Jo blames herself for loving Prospect so much that she gave Samuel a reason to destroy the courthouse, and for loving Samuel so much that she didn’t realize he was “the kind of man who would.”

After the bomb explodes, Samuel hides in the mountains, not realizing that that a video camera had captured his image. Sheriff Hawkins has known Samuel and Jo forever. He knows that Jo knows where Samuel is hiding. It would be easier for Jo to tell him, particularly after the FBI comes calling, but her loyalty to Samuel compels her silence.

Ambiguous relationships dominate Eden Mine. The father of the injured girl is a preacher named Asa Truth who seems drawn to Jo, torn between his Christian desire to forgive and his fatherly hope that Jo will reveal Samuel’s location so that he can be punished. Hawkins has long been Jo’s friend, but he may need to exploit that friendship to find Samuel. A gallery owner admires Jo’s use of mud from the landscapes she paints as a pigment, incorporating the place into her image of the place, but in truth, the owner wants to market Jo’s status as the sister of the bomber to improve sales.

And then there are Jo and Samuel. Is the bond between them stronger than Jo’s belief that justice must be done? Is it stronger than Samuel’s instinct for self-preservation? Can Jo live with what Samuel did? Would it be a betrayal if she tells Hawkins where to find him? Would Samuel forgive his sister for betraying him? Can anyone forgive Samuel for what he did? Would Asa, a pastor, think the man who killed his daughter deserve forgiveness?

The struggle with faith is another key theme. Asa ponders familiar questions about believing in a god who brings so much suffering to his worshippers. Asa believes that, as a child, he healed a bicyclist who was struck by his father’s car, but he has never advertised himself as a faith healer. Asa is tormented because his daughter remains in a coma despite his faith, or perhaps because his shaken faith is insufficiently strong. He doesn’t understand why he had been given the ability to heal when he cannot use it to heal the person he loves.

Brief sections of the novel are told from Samuel’s point of view, but the narrative primarily belongs to Jo. Neither Jo nor Asa understand why they are drawn to each other, but the reader understands that they each need something that only the other can provide. S.M. Hulse makes it easy to empathize with both characters. Perhaps Samuel deserves no empathy, but Hulse makes it easy to understand why he became the kind of person he never intended to be. Too many people, the novel suggests, have been shaped by forces they do not understand; websites that preach division and paranoid hatred, militias that offer violence as a solution to nonexistent problems.

Eden Mine builds to a dramatic conclusion. The ending is guardedly hopeful, suggesting that it is never too late to find the will to change. The novel illustrates a growing disconnect between reality-based Americans and those whose fringe beliefs are a danger to themselves and to society, but it does so in a story that is personal and moving.

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