Review of Kent Wascom's "The Blood of Heaven," Plus a Mission Debrief

So my review of Kent Wascom’s impressive debut novel, The Blood of Heaven, appears today in the Dallas Morning News, here. It’s a rollicking book, and I have to say I keep thinking of that Hatfields & McCoys miniseries whenever I think of the novel. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, the PR materials compare Wascom to Cormac McCarthy, and stylistically I can see why, but it’s also not a fair comparison. Let The Blood of Heaven stand on its own right. McCarthy will not be outdone, but every new writer can strike his or her own chord, remake the world anew.
This morning I’m sore from hiking in the dark last night for five hours straight, in steep and rugged mountain terrain west of Pueblo, Colorado. We probably hiked about 10 miles. I was out on a mission as part of the Custer County (Colorado) Search & Rescue team, of which I’m a member. We were looking for a lost fourteen-year-old boy, and we (there were several teams, including Pueblo County groups, maybe 20 people or so) covered a lot of trail, but didn’t find him: This morning he wandered into the campsite, and all is well. We hiked in the fog of wildfire smoke, and saw the super moon rise blood red in the sky. The picture below shows the smoky landscape, though it’s really hard to capture that burnt haze.