Reviewed by Rod McLary
This debut novel by Irish writer Edie May Hand is a breathtaking read from beginning to end. I have seldom read a first book which encompasses both the breadth and depth of a story about family, pervading violence, and ultimately survival so well and so engrossingly.
From the first sentence – Little Maude Rowe sits in the crick, her pockets heavy with gold, the blood on her face turned to powered rust [1], the novel is heavy with atmosphere and implied trauma. The narrative begins in 1981 shortly after an event which isn’t fully explained but one which has repercussions which reverberate through the novel. There is Maude, her older brother Denny, a child Billy and a baby, and Opal together leaving Idaho after this terrible event and fleeing to Canada to become a family.
The trajectory of the novel moves across different time periods – from July 1975 to September 1981 with stops in between – gradually building up a picture of each character’s life before and after the traumatic event. Opal first met her husband James on a commuter train when she was returning home after her job as a nanny. Together they move to Silver Valley in Idaho where James begins work in a silver mine. There they meet Denny son of Baron Rowe – ‘a charismatic visionary who controls the community with an iron fist’. Denny’s relationship with his father is a fraught one where Denny continually strives to and fails to live up to his father’s expectations. When Denny and Opal first meet, Opal ‘recognised something in him’ [76] and a friendship grows between them.
But in December 1976, the first of two tragedies occur. There is a tunnel collapse in the silver mine and the responsibility for this is placed by his father Baron squarely on Denny’s shoulders. This blame – whether fair or not – reverberates through the subsequent years and culminates in the second tragedy which leads to the found family – Denny, Opal, Maude, Billy and the baby – fleeing to Canada to begin a life as a family. Only then do we gather a real sense of what has led to this escape and the bonds which have grown between the members of this family as they find in each other what they had been seeking.
In almost poetic language which captures the sometimes-inarticulate dialogue between the characters, the author has crafted a narrative coloured by the long shadow of violence – sometimes sudden and brief and other times of unbearable duration. In few words, the author is able to capture the emotions of a character without the need for explanations – such as There is pain and hurt and many things which [Denny] will never let himself think of again. He can go somewhere else: to a pocket in his mind, a door that he can open [233].
Dirtpickers is a novel to be savoured and read carefully and slowly to fully appreciate the sparse language and the poetic beauty of the emerging narrative.
Well recommended.
Edith May Hand is from County Meath in Ireland. She graduated from University College Dublin in 2019 with honours in History of Art and English Literature. Edie began Dirtpickers as part of a Creative Writing Masters Program for which she received a first-class honours degree in 2024. Dirtpickers is her first novel and she is currently writing her second.
Dirtpickers
[2026]
by Edie May Hand
Echo Publishing
ISBN: 978 1 7865 8823 4
$34.99; 342pp