Cave Mountain: A Disappearance and a Reckoning in the Ozarks
Like the trails where it begins, the book is craggy, meandering its way between loosely connected acts of violence and Mr. Hale’s ruminations about religion and redemption. But these difficulties are outweighed by Mr. Hale’s subjects and his willingness both to look at and to look beyond their worst moments ... It would be easy for a writer to make this into a cautionary tale about the danger of religious zealotry. And Mr. Hale does some of that ... The author is more successful showing that Bethany Clark’s murderers did not remain monsters ... It is to Mr. Hale’s great credit that he refuses to anathematize the prodigal children in his book.
Repetition is inevitable, even necessary, in a work of nonfiction involving multiple story lines, but Hale reiterates some details too often, or too identically ... These repetitions, as well as Hale’s incorporation of so many threads that are irrelevant to the main one, start to feel like the author’s attempts to mask the fact that the cult crime story didn’t quite provide him enough material for a full book. The result is a mess of narratives and ideas, and as the pages turn it becomes clear they won’t gel into a satisfying whole.
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Detail-rich prose brimming with intriguing asides, twists, turns and reflections, giving readers up-close-and-personal insights along with thoughtful analysis of personalities and events ... An intimate, deeply original, true crime narrative ... What a story it is.
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