Having just finished The Chain House, Ransom Burning brings a different tone and style from J.H. Markert, one that more aligns with his earlier work as an author. While Ransom Burning was a wonderfully written novel, it also was one that had me yelling at the page and furious at the end. Based around a few true facts, things like this that happen to anyone on this beautiful earth always makes me angry and am all the better for it when those such as Markert tells their story.
It’s 1974, and Los Angeles Times reporter Hunter Dreary returns to his hometown of Ransom, Kentucky, when he hears his autistic younger brother, Wally, is in trouble. But when he arrives at the sheriff’s office, Hunter is the one facing an interrogation after Wally accidentally reveals details from an infamous night in the town’s history—details that lead the sheriff straight to a body buried in the woods.
The discovery brings back memories of St. Anthony’s first state basketball championship a decade ago and of Lewis Truffant, the Black fifteen-year-old who not only integrated the Catholic high school earlier in the year but hit the game-winning shot. But it also dredges up what most townspeople had hoped to forget, that by sunrise the next day, Lewis had been found hanging from a tree, and fires and riots soon followed. The truth of what happened that night has been buried ever since.
Still haunted by Lewis’s death and pushed into action by each new unearthed secret, Hunter, with help from a childhood friend, Annie Tampini, finally starts asking questions of his own. But he’s not the only one searching for answers. And the painful truth, once exposed, might hold the power to finally bring the corrupt town to its knees.
Now, Ransom Burning isn’t fully based in fact, there are factual moments where Markert has molded into this story to make the impact felt but the overall true events are fictionalized. This blend of fact and fiction made the story more impactful and had me in tears when Markert was explaining the basis for writing this story in his author’s note at the end. It breaks my heart that some people have to deal with things in this world.
You’d think winning a basketball championship would be all smiles around the town of Ransom, but something dark is simmering behind the scenes that won’t rear its ugly head for years. There is only pain, fear, and hurt that comes from Ransom over the years and it isn’t until Hunter Dreary returns to his hometown when things start to shed some light.
Ransom Burning is filled with tension, heartfelt moments, and anger. You can tell the story is told with passion and from a personal place in history. While not all the moments in the book are based in fact, Markert uses this fictionalized story to tell an import part of what this country, specially this location, has gone through over the years when seemingly good people do bad things. Markert touches on racism and the hidden secrets that some unlucky few have to hold onto in life.
Not many stories can make me utterly anger at the world, but Ransom Burning is just such story. It’s another example of a story not there to teach me anything but does anyway. I know bad things such as this have happen in years past, even today, but it’s when a talented author with a personal connection tells the story in such fitting fashion when I truly let it sink in and chill me to the bone. Not to mention being the father of two beautiful children, all I wanted to do was hold them close.
Ransom Burning got under my skin and is going to stay there long into the future. J.H. Markert delivers a story filled with mystery, heartbreak, anger, and characters you desperately want to see find some sense of justice in a town that has spent far too long hiding from the truth. Ransom Burning is a truly powerful and downright heartbreaking story that proves Markert has many levels in his storytelling.
Ransom Burning hits bookstores everywhere on January 26, 2027 from Crooked Lane Books.
