The Valley of Light

Rating:
Summary: More than a good fishing story
Review: When a wandering fisherman named Noah Locke arrives at a small town along the Georgia/ North Carolina border near Lake Chatuge in 1948, he's looking for a legendary bass.

Noah Locke has a special gift, a way of touching the water and sensing what's going on beneath the surface. While the local residents quickly recognize Locke's gift and make him feel welcome, he's not a man to stay long in one place. Beneath his calm exterior, Locke is haunted by his parent's deaths, his brother's jail term, and what he saw in the war.

Kay knows North Georgia, the customs, the speech patterns, the good stories and the tall tales, and he communicates all of this with transcendent and poetic prose, perfectly rendered dialogue, three dimensional characters, a fine sense of place, and a gentle touch.

And when we're done reading "The Valley of Light" and see very clearly the meaning of the fishing metaphor and how all the characters ended up where they ended up, we feel as though we were immersed in another world for a time and then suddenly yanked out of that enchanted place like an eight-pound bass well played on the end of a line.