The Finder of Forgotten Things
Summer 1932. Handsome 28-year-old Sullivan “Sulley” Harris drifts from town to town in West Virginia, claiming expertise as a dowser. When his well locations come up dry, he scampers away in the night. Sulley’s most recent victims elect schoolteacher Jeremiah Weber to run him down and retrieve the money they paid. At Sulley’s next stop, postmistress Gainey Floyd takes a liking to him and recommends him to a local fruit farmer desperate for more water.
Sulley does find things—a misplaced watch, a lost coat button, underground water, and people gone missing. Gainey, attractive and charming but old enough to be Sulley’s mom, hides that as a teen she gave up her newborn son for adoption. Jeremiah has been evading a marriage of convenience to a local widow.
These three main characters are drawn to the real-life greatest US workplace disaster. Able-bodied men flock to a dig site called Hawk’s Nest Tunnel. The mountain’s silica infects lungs, often disabling and then killing in mere months. Many dead are thrown into unmarked graves. Soon Sulley, looking for opportunity, snoops around the tunnel’s work camps. Gainey goes there to comfort workers taken ill. Jeremiah keeps following Sulley and meets Gainey.
Thomas effectively presents the conditions of the tunnel, the brutality of bosses, the laborers taken ill, and families wondering if sons or husbands will come back. Sulley, Gainey, and Jeremiah’s deepening connections to each other and those they help ring true. The novel would be stronger if shorter and with fewer repetitive descriptions and details—from lip biting to cart rides and coughing spasms. However, overall the journeys of the three main characters set against the tunnel disaster make for a heart-tugging and interesting story.
