Nothing More Dangerous by Allen Eskens

Nothing More Dangerous by Allen Eskens – 352 pages

Book Blurb:

After fifteen years of growing up in the Ozark hills with his widowed mother, high-school freshman Boady Sanden is beyond ready to move on. He dreams of glass towers and cityscapes, driven by his desire to be anywhere other than Jessup, Missouri. The new kid at St. Ignatius High School, if he isn’t being pushed around, he is being completely ignored. Even his beloved woods, his playground as a child and his sanctuary as he grew older, seem to be closing in on him, suffocating him. Then Thomas Elgin moves in across the road, and Boady’s life begins to twist and turn. Coming to know the Elgins-a black family settling into a community where notions of “us” and “them” carry the weight of history-forces Boady to rethink his understanding of the world he’s taken for granted. Secrets hidden in plain sight begin to unfold: the mother who wraps herself in the loss of her husband, the neighbor who carries the wounds of a mysterious past that he holds close , the quiet boss who is fighting his own hidden battle. But the biggest secret of all is the disappearance of Lida Poe, the African-American woman who keeps the books at the local plastics factory. Word has it that Ms. Poe left town, along with a hundred thousand dollars of company money. Although Boady has never met the missing woman, he discovers that the threads of her life are woven into the deepest fabric of his world.

My Review: 4.5 stars

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Nothing More Dangerous is a prequel to a series of books that can stand alone, yet also revisit characters from other books in the series. His first book, The Life We Bury, was a complete winner for me and I knew I’d be a forever fan of this author. I’m not a series reader yet I did read read the first three. If I had more time, I’d read them all; I just don’t have the time. All of his books are compelling, but it was the first that stole my heart until I read this gem. Honestly, I was skeptical about a prequel yet confident that Allen Eskens would create a wonderful story. I was right on.

Boady, the main character in this novel, was a likeable teen boy who does his best to do right in the world. He’s beset by a depressed mother, a group of bullies who have made him a target and a mysterious, yet important neighbor that helps guide Broady along.

The crux of this book has a mystery to be solved and it’s Boady and his new and only friend that discover the truth. With a crooked police department, a gang of white supremacists, and his new friend being black, it’s hard to be heard and quite dangerous.

The characters are richly developed, nuanced and believable. Boady’s angst was palpable. He had to choose sides between right and wrong, which was aided through his relationship with both his friend Thomas and his neighbor Hoke. The small-town life was described so well. Everyone knew everyone and anyone that moved there was immediately a suspicious outsider. This book was suspenseful, while maintaining a meaningful storyline with mother-son relationships, bigotry, class differences, romance, mystery, race relations and a coming of age story at its heart.

I highly recommend this one. If you’ve never read the author before, this is great place to start.

Quotes I liked:

You put enough like-minded idiots in a room, and pretty soon their backward way of thinking starts to take on an air of legitimacy.” 

“Well, it run much deeper than that. In a perfect world, ignorant notions should die a quick death. A thing like racism, if it can’t find a kindred spirit…it’s like a dog barking at a stone. But if you can find just one other person who thinks like you…well, even the most irrational belief can grow roots. Small-minded people feed off each other, and before you know it, you have mobs, and you have burning crosses, and lynchings.”

“It’s not a matter of if we have prejudices – we do. It’s a matter of understanding those instincts and fighting against them.”