As I have noted before, experiencing an author's first work is a little like watching a young bird's first attempt at flight. You never know quite what to expect. Will the author soar as if born to the sky? Or will they flutter about flapping wildly as they struggle to gain control of their newfound wings? In her first novel, author Mary Volmer manages to stay aloft, but sadly, her maiden flight is not exactly majestic.
"Crown of Dust" is the story of Motherlode, a small mining encampment in Northern California. Set in the mid-1800s during the Gold Rush, Motherlode is populated by a motley assortment of grungy miners all hoping to strike it rich, or at least collect enough gold dust to afford "tobacco, a little salt pork and flour, and a new shirt when the old one falls off [their] back." The miners are watched after and kept in line by Emaline, a large, rough and tumble woman, the proprietor of the only saloon/boarding house in town and, not coincidentally, the camp's one and only prostitute. "Emaline is solid with wide, square shoulders and thick vein tracked forearms. A fringe of dark hair feathers her upper lip. Her only softness appears to be her generous bosom that strains the front of her dress like mounds of rising sourdough."
The picture Volmer paints of Motherlode is that of a large, somewhat dysfunctional family with Emaline as the matriarchal glue which holds the group together. Into this setting comes Alex, a skinny young man with a gold pan strapped to his back. We soon discover that Alex is actually Alexandra, a young woman masquerading as a boy in order to escape her troubled past. The rest of the story revolves around Alex's relationship with Emaline and the miners, her struggle to maintain the fiction of being male and her efforts to master the arduous craft of prospecting for gold.
The images the author conjures up have an uncertain quality to them that is often compelling: "Emaline searches the sky for storm clouds. ... Can't predict the weather this time of year. Fools even the wild flowers. Mistake three days of sunshine for the start of May when one hard freeze will snap the petals right off and kill the early batch of mosquitoes already swarming." The writer's voice, often expressed through the thoughts of Emaline, is also distinctive: "It''s no wonder nobody in these parts has struck pay dirt yet, what with their canvas tents and frame cabins so easy to desert. Why would the earth give up its gold just to be abandoned on rumor of another strike? The soil is a shrewd old whore and has learned better than to give her gold for free."
Sadly, these successful passages are balanced by the author's overuse of the third person present tense to describe mundane activities. "She takes the lid from the flour barrel, pours a measure into a large ceramic bowl with a bit of sourdough starter, adds a generous dollop of lard, an egg, a pinch of precious salt and begins to knead. ... She hefts the iron pot from the floor, fills it with a bucket and a half of water, and stokes the fire."
Another less than successful aspect of "Dust" is the dialogue, which is largely presented in pseudo-Western dialect. Period dialect is difficult to pull off, even by the best of writers. When done well, the results shine like gold. When handled clumsily, individual voices become muddy and difficult to distinguish from one another. Take the following exchange between two miners trying to decide whether to take on Alex as their partner.
'Wouldn't hurt to have some help. Someone to shake the cradle,' Limpy says, as David pours a bucket in the hopper. The water splashes, speckling his trousers. 'Been thinking 'bout a long tom or a sluice box. Need more men to work one of those.' He rocks the cradle until David returns with another bucket of water. 'Said yourself he reminded you of your brother.'
'My brothers are in Cornwall.' David dumps the water. 'That boy's too scrawny to hold a shovel. He probably wouldn't know gold from pyrite.'
Another curiosity of the book is that virtually everyone in the story seems to have a past from which they are attempting to escape. While Volmer is skillful at holding the reader's interest by doling out each person's back story in dribs and drabs, the fact that there doesn't seem to be anyone in Motherlode who is free from a painful past makes the book's characterizations take on a somewhat one-dimensional aspect.
From a writing perspective, there are lots of missed opportunities in "Dust." Many of the interesting characters in the book are left largely undeveloped. like an artist who leaves figures in the background of a portrait sketched but not fully painted. There are also themes like racism and gender confusion that run throughout the book but remain tantalizingly unresolved. Perhaps the most glaring flaw in the book for me, however, is that it contains no strong antagonist. The lack of a definite villain in the story makes the book's violent climax appear arbitrary and much less dramatic than it could have been.
As I said at the beginning, the book does succeed. Volmer creates an interesting world and fills it with characters we care about, even root for. As a fledgling effort at storytelling, "Crown of Dust" is definitely worth reading, even if it does wobble a bit in places.