Salvation

In Langsfeld’s elegiac debut, a lifetime of abuse and emotional neglect drives Tom Horak to kill his former childhood friend, Rust Hawkins. After the murder, Tom retreats from his small Colorado town to a cabin in the Rocky Mountains, where he endures a harsh winter with nothing but memories of his painful past and the moose meat he manages to hunt. Tom grew up in a house dominated by his alcoholic father, whose explosive rage and rigid ideas of masculinity prevented him from expressing his love in a healthy way. As a young adult, Tom entered a passionate, on-off relationship with the free-spirited Rose, who eventually married Rust and had his son, Gus, widening the divide between the two friends. Following Rust’s death, Gus, long abandoned by Rose, is taken in by Morris Green, a lonely Lutheran pastor grappling with his own existential doubts. Meanwhile, peace officer Marshal Tomlinson reluctantly pursues Tom, aware that the trauma of his childhood makes any hope of justice or closure an illusion. Like the novels of Tom Franklin and Willy Vlautin, Langsfeld’s meditative noir sanctifies lives steeped in pain and regret, yet still lit by the faint possibility of a brighter tomorrow. It’s an auspicious first outing. (Feb.)