The Devil All the Time

Donald Ray Pollock's The Devil All the Time is an unyielding gothic masterpiece that explores the nexus where sex, death, and violence converge. Spanning 1945 to the early 1960s, The Devil All the Time tethers a set of gritty characters to southern Ohio and West Virginia. Willard Russell sacrifices living creatures in the hope of curing his wife's cancer, before he commits suicide and leaves his son, Arvin, an orphan. Arvin is then sent to live with his grandmother Emma, who is raising Lenora, another vulnerable orphan, who gets involved with a sex-crazed preacher while another preacher, Roy, roams the desolate landscape with his paraplegic cousin Theodore, after having randomly killed Lenora's father. Meanwhile sheriff Lee Bodecker's only concern is that his prostituting sister, Sandy, will tarnish his already spotty reputation, while Sandy and her serial killer husband, Carl, take long road trips where they murder hitchhikers. Pollock masterfully weaves the characters' plotlines together while spooling out a series of unsettling scenes, all of which lead to a final standoff where justice is carried out, if questionably. Still, after the bodies have piled up, The Devil All the Time ranks as one of the best books of the year.