Mid-Reading Thoughts on Soil by Jamie Kornegay

Soil was one of the two early reviewer books that I was really excited to win on my birthday this year (and, luckily enough, the first early reviewer copy I've ever applied for). It's slated for publishing in March 2015 and has an interesting premise: a paranoid soil expert decides to try to revolutionize farming (and keep his family safe during the inevitable apocalypse) by moving out into the country to build his own sustainable farm, but he is soon ruined by a flood and his wife and son leave him. Alone, starving, and growing more paranoid by the day, he discovers a corpse on his flooded property and suspects that the townspeople are going to blame the crime on him. Therefore, he has to figure out some way to conceal the body, but, unbeknownst to him, various interconnecting plot lines are unfolding all around him...

Thoughts on it so far are after the jump!

So far, I'm enjoying Soil quite a bit. Some people have said that they find the main character, Jay, inexplicably paranoid, and that this makes him unrealistic, but I think that his paranoia is, actually, justified by a family tragedy (into which I won't go too deeply here, not wanting to spoil anything), and, after all, there are plenty of paranoid preppers in the world who haven't been ruined and bankrupted by a flood. Granted, he sometimes goes a bit far, veering off into madness territory, especially as the story moves along and his misfortunes just seem to keep on piling up, but what else can be expected from an already unstable man trying to hide a body for fear of being suspected of the crime?

Kornegay sets his scenes well and it's easy for the reader--especially a reader with some experience living in the country--to imagine each of the different locations, from Jay's dilapidated house and junkyard-esque property to the run-down house in which his wife, Sandy, is trying to make a life with their son. So far, I've found that it's easy to picture all of the characters in my mind as well, which I think is partly because Kornegay doesn't try too hard to make you see his vision of them. You won't find multiple paragraphs devoted to describing each character's clothing, hair, skin tone, or facial structure. If something is relevant, he'll tell you; if it's not, he leaves it up to your imagination. This gives the reader the freedom to paint his or her own picture of Kornegay's small-town world and the people within it.

My one complaint so far is that the characters seem a little one-dimensional. Jay is always paranoid, Sandy keeps hoping to repair their marriage even though their every exchange reminds her of why she left him in the first place, and other characters seem to be in the story purely to move the plot along. The only one who seems to have any kind of depth and complexity at this point is Deputy Danny Shoals, who plays Officer Handsome Good Guy around town but is gradually beginning to reveal that he is more than that. His true nature and intentions remain uncertain at this point. He might come through it all as a successful, virtuous sheriff, or he might turn around, use his position to his advantage, and end up bringing his world crashing down around him. Everything is kind of balanced on a razor's edge at this point, and it's just a matter of seeing which way it'll fall.

Overall, I'm sitting at a tipping point in the story right now, which is why I figured now would be a good time to put down my midway-through thoughts on it. Everything is rather precarious and ready to take a turn for the worse at the slightest provocation. Will Jay really be accused of murdering the man found on his property? Will his efforts to hide the body damn him all the more? Who is Shoals, really? How is Sandy going to factor into everything? All of these questions remain to be answered, and all I can do is go along for the ride!