Matt Baker’s Drag the Darkness Down dredges* up dark secrets | OU Review

Drag the Darkness Down
By Matt Baker
No Record Press, 212 pp

4 out of 5 bookmarks

[Disclosure: Ozarks Unbound received a review copy of Matt Baker's Drag the Darkness Down for free. Leave a comment below and we will have a drawing to give it away next week.]

By Christa Spencer

With his debut novel, Drag the Darkness Down, author Matt Baker establishes himself as a unique writer with a distinct literary voice. His characters are deeply and subtly developed; the plot is somehow both fast-paced and meandering, but always pushing forward.

Only a highly skilled author can write a novel in true first-person, and Baker, Oxford American’s associate publisher, strictly adheres to this concept. The reader is in the mind of protagonist Odom Shiloh, and only Odom Shiloh.

Drag the Darkness Down takes the reader on a tour of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Missouri.

It’s a journey to find his runaway adult sister, Birdshit. He enlists the help of family friend and private investigator Blakey Flake, for a modest fee because Blakey “can’t pay bills with favors or eat favors.”

Detective work is not a talent of Blakey’s, but his quips, opinions, and self-assuredness make him a likeable enough sidekick.

Odom describes his family, the Shilohs, as wealthy, influential and secretive. As he and Blakey are driving north on 71 past Bentonville, he compares the Shiloh Foundation to the underground bunkers used by Wal-Mart to house their supercomputers.

He is both fascinated by and bitter toward Wal-Mart.

“I think the best thing Shiloh could’ve ever done was to crush Sam Walton when we had the chance.” Arkansans tend to have strong feelings, whether positive or negative, toward Wal-Mart, so I dismissed this mini rant as nothing more than that.

Later in the story it becomes clear that Odom was actually expressing anger toward his own father, and this is the beginning of his mind becoming consumed with increasingly dark thoughts.

The mental unhinging of Odom Shiloh is deftly crafted throughout the book. By writing in first person, author Baker is able to subtly and slowly take the reader on Odom’s journey toward mental breakdown.

The breakdown begins in part two, when Odom finally returns him from his multi-state search for Birdshit. This meltdown occurs suddenly and forcefully.

Like the flip of a light switch, Odom’s easy-going nature disappears as he brutally forces a man to perform fellatio on the barrel of a shotgun.

Because the reader is only privy to Odom’s reality, the extent of his mental instability is not fully understood prior to this scene. It becomes painfully clear from that point forward. Any discomfort I felt, however, is also confirmation of the author’s vivid imagery and dialog.

I wanted to look away, but I needed to know how this would end.

Matt Baker has set a high bar for himself with Drag the Darkness Down. I look forward to meeting more of the characters he may have stashed away in his mind, and will be on the lookout for his sophomore novel.

[* = Many thanks to reader Betty Tyler for pointing out that the correct word is "dredges" not "drudges" as originally written in the headline.]

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