Jake Leonard has more than his share of trouble. He’s close to forty now and still suffers from bipolar disorder and the painful memories of the psychotic episodes that derailed his life and sent him behind bars as a youth. He lives in the rural south where he spends his days breaking horses and his nights training dogs in solitude. His nineteen-year-old girlfriend, Nikki, is the daughter of the … the sheriff, and she’s just getting worse with drugs, alcohol and satanic metal, eventually leading into heroin and low-budget porn. When Jake reconnects with his ex-wife, things get even more complicated, and the limits of love and sanity get pushed to the breaking point. The Ruin Season is a haunting tale of a mentally ill man struggling in a violent and heartless world. It is a story of unrequited love, rage, and bloody revenge. It moves forward in the style of gritty southern gothic novels, in the tradition of Larry Brown, Harry Crews, Daniel Woodrell, Cormac McCarthy, and Flannery O’Conner. It shows both the tender and horrible sides of insanity as well as the seedy underbelly of the American, backwoods suburbs.
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Before I get started on this one, a couple shout-outs to Charles Kahlenberg. I listened to THE RUIN SEASON as an Audiobook narrated by Charles Kahlenberg. His voice fit the story perfectly. I am so pleased that I heard it this way because the style, the mood, the emotions all rolled from his voice perfectly! Now, onto the story itself. As I was listening to it, the story reminded me a lot of Joe R. Lansdale’s stories. Or maybe a Lansdale world. I could very easily picture the events from this book as occurring in the same world as Hap & Leonard or countless other of his books. Something where I start reading for the story but realize quickly that the characters are so much more engrossing that the already good story.
In this case, despite the protagonist’s desire for a simple life, he has a lot happening. Jake Leonard is close to forty. He’s divorced due to his bipolar disorder. He’s dating the sheriff’s 19-year-old daughter. And drugs, alcohol, and death (all happening to others) are going to make Jake’s life hard.
The story description will tell you more but I’m not. That was enough to get me engaged and as I mentioned, it took me nothing to become engrossed with the events happening. Unfortunately I could tell about halfway through that the ending was not going to be happy. The impending doom kept stalking forward and I hoped that somehow it wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought. Suspense was only part of it; I knew that the emotional impact of this good guy hitting some sort of bottom was going to hurt. And that is when you know that you are reading a really good book!
I was not sure what this book was about when I received it, but it was a nice change of pace from all of the horror I have been reading lately. I will say that knowing this is not a horror novel, it shows the depth of genres that Kristopher Triana can successfully write.
Jake is a solitary man who lives in the rural South. He has a ranch where he keeps those that understand him best, horses and dogs. Jake has always been good with animals and uses that knowledge to train them for himself and others. He has an illness that broke up his marriage to the love of his life, Michelle. The Ruin Season is the story of Jake and how he has managed to live with his bi-polar illness in the years after his divorce. His quiet, unassuming life turns into a whirlwind very quickly based on some choices he makes for himself and others.
This was a compelling story about a man battling his demons. You can see he has a lot of good in him, with a lot of bad hanging around waiting for its opportunity. The narration by Charles Kahlenberg was fantastic! I liked that Triana took on the subject of being bi-polar and explaining through Jake’s eyes what it is like to live with that illness. Because of this candid insight into Jake’s mind, we feel his pain, sorrow, and happiness throughout the book. Kristopher Triana has the uncanny ability to make you enter the psyche of his characters as the story unravels. We are lead down a path of twists and turns with outcomes least expected.