In Boston at AWP, I had thoroughly browsed three cavernous rooms of book fair tables and it was time to go home. Hauling my luggage behind me, I was exiting Exhibition Hall A when I paused one last time at the Anansi table and glanced down.
Jeremiah, O H I O by Adam Sol.
I picked the book up, a thin volume with a repeated motif of red cardinal birds and a photo of a 1970’s car in a field, a backseat passenger, no driver.
“This book is calling to me,” I said to the person staffing the table.
“It’s a gem,” she said. “$5 and it’s yours.”
It would fit in my luggage. I couldn’t resist.
Back home, I cracked it while riding the bus into town, was at page 60 within an hour. Jeremiah, OHIO is the kind of book you finish, then flip back to the beginning and start reading again immediately.
These are the words of Jeremiah, the son of Hank,
of the failed farmers and short-order cooks
who tilled and tore the soil of Southern Ohio
in the days that became years that became confusion.
A distilled, poetic version of Empire Wilderness, with sharp dollops of wit and grief, a quixotic journey through Ohio and Pennsylvania to New York. In the book, the prophet Jeremiah reminded me of a guy we saw in Times Square once, holding a “Tell me off for $1.00” sign.
How so few words can say so much.