In 2001 Kyle Jarrard published Rolling the Bones. Nine years later, and in one day of voracious reading, I read it. I will read this book again and again. Everyone read this book! Rolling the Bones is a fabulous adventure book, a soul-searcher, a dream-catcher, and a long, luscious roll in the hay, accompanied by great characters, whopping lies, spiraling plot, and imagery so full and deep it was as if I were there, a silent participant, for every single minute of it. From North Texas to Oklahoma's panhandle to southern Mexico to Louisiana and back down to central Mexico and then onwards and onwards, the book is about road trips and mind trips and hearts entwined, torn apart, and found again.
Carl Blalock and his wife Venus welcome traveling man Carl Stein and his beautiful wife May into their town, their hardware store, their house, and their hearts. On a day's lazy trip to the far shore of a local lake, tragedy strikes and all the lives of all the players -- those present, those in the past, and those still to appear -- change forever, in ways that are unpredictable, slightly twisted, and completely satisfying.
To roll the bones is to gamble, to play a game of chance, to throw the dice and see where luck takes you. The idea of giving up control over the future, disallowing the past to exert control, and giving in to the present is a central theme of the novel. May uses it as a mantra to survive -- and even enjoy -- her peripatetic existence, whereas her husband Carl hangs on as tightly as he can to control, a necessary element of his calling, the con of good people. Carl Blalock and Venus unwillingly lose control but once it's gone, they go all the way in their unraveling, following the freed lines of fate and luck and winding up in a place I hoped they would but didn't know they would until the very end.
There are other characters in Rolling the Bones and every one, from walk-on role to longer-term actor have a story. Jarrard tells each story with narrative to match their tale and their identity. The result is a book of rollicking rhythm, never boring, always fascinating, and certain to make your brain turn cartwheels.
The writing itself is beautiful, with lovely descriptions of places within the heart and outside the windows of the always-moving car:
"The mighty wind that bore down on the earth and on the ragged people who managed to cling to it, stone-faced folks out there watching her go by. Rust-brown people who neither smiled nor frowned, who sat atop their hunks of machinery and observed her, a woman alone. Lead-eyed people who'd lost a limb, or a child, to an accident, or a wife to disease, people leaning like the telephone poles but held together by all that old wire, all the years of being out in the middle of nowhere."
At one point Venus stops by an abandoned farm house surrounded by tall grasses and backed by a grove of trees hanging low with cinnamon flavored pears: the suspended moment of peace is so tempting and so lovely that I wished to be there myself.
The characters in Rolling the Bones spend a lot of time driving, lying around hotel rooms and porches, and sitting on deck chairs, staring off into sunsets that deepen into blue then black. Why didn't a single one of these men or women, so thirsty for adventure, ever pick up a book? A book like this one, full of risk and chance. They do reach for each other, reminding me of a great line from Jim Harrison's The English Major, "The only real adventure in most people's lives is adultery." For the characters in Rolling the Bones, adultery is only one of many adventures, adventures taken on a gamble and played for high stakes: love, life, and happiness.
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