When our family moved many years ago from Chicago to the Washington, DC area, I drove all the way with our old car going through Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. It’s a long road trip through the Rust Belt. The region is known for its heavy industries such as steel mills which made its prosperity. Its decline over the last 30 years now carries a heavy burden of economic and social devastation.
It was a long series of highways, but I allowed myself a short escapade south of Pittsburgh, in Western Pennsylvania to visit « Fallingwater », Frank Lloyd Wright’ architectural masterpiece. The house was built in 1935 as a country residence for a family of rich businessmen from Pittsburgh. It is known for its perfect integration within its natural environment, including the waterfall at the origin of its name. In the heart of wonderful forests, it is worth the detour and even the trip. It is also a testimony to the glory days of the past in this region which is now the Rust Belt.
About one hour from there, « American Rust», Philipp Meyer’s first novel, immerses the reader in that America previously prosperous and now in decline. Buell, where most of the novel takes place is an imaginary town, but is not far from Charleroi, PA. The city shares its name with Charleroi, in Belgium, a metropolis also marked by industrial decline. Paul Magnette, the mayor of the Belgian Charleroi made the trip, not only to pay homage to this sister cities founded by Walloon immigrants, but also to understand how a region which used to be a Democratic stronghold went for Donald Trump in 2016.
In Buell, Isaac English and Billy Poe are two high school friends. Billy was a star of the football team. Isaac was one of the few good students who could make it to a top university. But Billy declined the offers from college coaches while Isaac did not follow in her sister Lee’s footsteps who studied at Yale. One day, Isaac decides to travel West by riding trains. He wants to study in California and escapes after stealing his father’s cash stack. He asks Billy to come with him on the first leg of the journey, following the tracks leaving out of the city. During the first stop in an abandoned building, a fight erupts with some homeless men. Isaac manages to defend Billy, but then it is Billy who, out of loyalty will endure the consequences of the drama, dragging into it his mother Grace, who happens to be the love interest of Bud Harris, the local police chief.
It is a wonderful novel which fittingly describes the ancient loyalties, the missed opportunities and the regrets of overlapping generations as their splendid valley sinks, slowly, but without hope.
At the other end of Pennsylvania is Philadelphia, one of the large metropolises on the East Coast and one of the cradles of the American Revolution. I recently traveled there to visit Temple University’s campus where the writer Liz Moore also happens to teach. Her book « Long Bright River » is a spellbinding thriller leading us in Kensington, one of the roughest areas of the city. Mickey Fitzpatrick grew up in the neighborhood when it was still prized by the working class. Since then, she became a cop and patrols the streets which have become a “Walmart of Heroin”. Many bodies of a drug addicts, who resort to prostitution to pay for their doses, are found dead in the area. Overdoses or murders? At each radio call, Mickey’s heart skips a beat. And if it was her little sister Kacey, who became an opioid addict since she was 16? She hasn’t heard from her for months, but she knows she is still on Kensington’s streets.
Between thriller and family drama, Mickey conducts the investigation, even against her superiors who seem to want to bury the cases.
