The best feeling for me, as a reader, is when you can sink in and get swept away by the musicality of the language. The sound of my debut novel, The Dredge—which comes out in paperback from Grove Atlantic on March 18—is pretty sparse and stripped down.
It’s about two estranged brothers who must confront the violence of the past, when they find out a pond where they played as children will soon be dredged, threatening to reveal a long-hidden secret. What makes it different from most mysteries is that it’s not about uncovering secrets. It’s about keeping them hidden.
The story is set mostly in a small town in a rural Connecticut town. It’s in March, the mudseason: when things start to melt and then freeze and then melt again. I tried to capture that feeling of the cold, the wet, the bare trees. Snow and ice interspersed with the warm days. Like grief, it’s up and down, non-linear and yet clocked. Winter might come roaring back but you just have to hold out hope and remember that spring is coming, and the thaw will bring you flowers. As such, here’s a Marchy playlist of some songs I was listening to a lot while writing it.
“Come on up to the house” by Tom Waits
This is the closing track—number 16—on 1999’s Mule Variations. Its depth and complexity are hidden in seeming simplicity, and the lyrics sound like scripture to me. The epigraph of my book is from this one: “Come down off the cross, we can use the wood.” I like that mix of hyperbole and practicality. The three main characters in the book are all struggling to forgive themselves for past sins, so they can move on and rebuild. To me, that line speaks to the whole spirit of the thing.
“Black River Swamp” by Link Wray
The sound! It took many listens for me to even understand the instrumentation in the harmonies — mandolin, dobro, and electric guitar, namely. I love the way it kind of stumbles in before it all comes together. It feels haunting and nostalgic, and I’ll stop myself from waxing poetic about the nature-scape it evokes for me. But I think this whole album is amazing and overlooked.
The book is set mostly in woods like the ones I grew up playing in. The Black River Swamp itself, along with the pining for childhood innocence in nature is thematically in line. Link Wray wasn’t writing about the Constitution State, of course—not many do. He was born in North Carolina and lived in Virginia. But this song feels like home to me. Thanks to my friend and the great author Henry Wise, I talked about it on Ed McKeon’s “Hoot and Holler” radio show here.
“Hi’ilawe” by Gabby Pahinui
Gabby Pahinui is a legend. The Dredge opens on the south shore of Oahu, where I lived for a year after college and worked as an administrative assistant for a real estate company. Islands, especially beautiful ones, are inherently romantic and ripe for escapist fantasy. I met many people there who’d come to start over in paradise and some who seemed to be on the run from something. Maybe I was one of them. The character Cale certainly is.
He’s traveled physically as far away from his past as he can, and yet, he still can’t outrun it. When he has to leave his life in Hawaii and fly back into the uncertainty of what awaits, he would’ve watched the island disappear through the airplane window and then give way to the sea while listening to Gabby.
“Draft Daughter’s Blues aka Ootischenia” by the Be Good Tanyas
The character Lily is hardened by childhood trauma, and has since grown into a guarded and pragmatic adult. She has secrets—mostly dark. One of them, though, is that she secretly has a beautiful voice that she never lets anyone hear, which sounds, I’m pretty sure, like Frazey Ford singing, “Goodbye to you in the sadness of this.”
“Souvenirs” by John Prine
I had the idea for the book many years before it came out. I returned to it over the years, and then struggled to write it in the teeth of the pandemic. With a few weeks between jobs, I got most of it down then. I was listening then to a lot of John Prine, whom I admire most for his humor and soul. Like so many, I was very sad about his passing. How lucky to have his work with us still.
“Call me the breeze” by JJ Cale
You probably know Lynyrd Skynyrd’s cover of this one, but it’s all about the original to me. When everything is going right inside my head, it sounds like this song, and that’s a few times a day at least. Naming the character Cale is a nod to Cain, of Abel fame, but also a tribute to my guy here.
“This 1 is 4” by Kissed Her Little Sister
I love the suspense of this song. It’s haunting and driving and full of dynamic changes, which give it a cinematic quality. Towards the end of the book, the estranged brothers finally reunite in the woods at night and begin the grisly undertaking they’ve put off for most of their lives. There’s tension and urgency and fear and dread. This song evokes that mix of feelings for me, and Kissed Her Little Sister is from the same place I am. He writes about it, too.
“Lost in the Dream” by The War on Drugs
Another moment toward the end, the brothers are together again in their childhood home, which hasn’t been a home since they were children. It’s just a house now. It’s a bittersweet and dreamy experience, like this song. I find the lyric, “Leave the light on the yard for me,” and the piano and guitar parts that follow it to be especially poignant. A simple meaningful gesture that speaks volumes about hope and doubt and waiting and homecoming.
“Baby Don’t Go” by Saitana