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Corrosive realities underpin remarkable ‘American Rust’

Beautiful writing about bleak realities may sound like a contradiction, just like the setting of “American Rust” — a Pennsylvania steel town — is beautiful country, if only you could find a job there.

Given the state of the economy, it’s tempting to focus on the economic underpinnings of Philipp Meyer’s ambitious and impressive debut novel.

The scene is set early:

“The mill itself had been like a small city, but they had closed it in 1987, partially dismantled it ten years later; it now stood like some ancient ruin, its buildings grown over with bittersweet vine, devil’s tear thumb, and tree of heaven. The footprints of deer and coyotes crisscrossed the grounds; there was only the occasional human squatter.”

The smart ones get out. But for complicated family reasons, neither Billy Poe, a football star with college offers, nor Isaac English, the smartest kid in all of the Monongahela Valley, have left, two years after high school.

Isaac’s plans to do so are cut short when the two boys — who are friends for reasons neither fully understands — have a violent encounter with three bums. As Billy later puts it, “It was not murder but what they were doing it did not look good.”

One of the bums dies in the first chapter. The rest of the novel deals with the aftermath, which is told through alternating perspectives of six characters. They include Isaac’s older sister, who has escaped to Yale, another world.

The most interesting character is the local police chief, who knows there are all kinds of justice and truths.

The plot is engrossing. The characters are richly complex. At times, the writing is stripped to its essentials, as when Isaac imagines how his mother drowned herself: “Pocketful of rock. Final eyeblink, saw her whole life in it. Wonder did it make her feel good or bad.”

There are chilling scenes about jumping freight trains and prison violence. One quibble: In the real world, would anyone awaiting trial, even for murder, be sent to a prison with inmates “doing life three times”?

The novel’s feel for economic dissolution takes on resonance in today’s economy. But American Rust is more than a parable for hard times. It’s a drama about making sacrifices, choices and mistakes that can change your life forever.

It also introduces a novelist worth celebrating and watching.