by Nicole Yurcaba
In Frank Bill’s Back to the Dirt, readers enter the PTSD-laden world of Miles Knox, a blue-collar Vietnam veteran. Miles exists in a rural town where Oxy dealers, alcoholism, and poverty reign. When his much younger girlfriend, Shelby, suddenly disappears, Miles recognizes what a transformative force Shelby has been in his life. Miles sets out to find Shelby, and as he and other locals uncover the events surrounding the murder of some local drug dealers, Miles learns that Shelby, and her brother Wylie, have more than their fair share of secrets. However, as much as it is a gripping, thrilling who-dunnit mystery on its surface, Back to the Dirt ultimately offers readers a deeper examination of the generational traumas and systemic oppressions which shape not only the individuals involved, but form the mindset and culture of entire geographic regions, and, more specifically, areas like the American South and the Appalachian region.
Miles struggles with PTSD and the constant haunting by what one character refers to as “the Vietnam voodoo.” In many ways, he is the trope of the stereotypical post-war veteran character that many readers encounter in post-war recovery literature. However, Miles is anything but a stereotype. In fact, despite his flaws (such as steroid usage and alcoholism), he is, essentially, the novel’s most redeeming character. He defies stereotypes because he is philosophical, well read, and surprisingly humane. The latter is most evident in not only the way he treats Shelby, but also in the way Miles treats Pie, a local black man who is often bullied and harassed by the other men at the factory where Miles works. Pie expects Miles to treat him the way other white men have treated Pie. Nonetheless, Miles does not spit racial epithets and slurs at Pie. Instead, he reminds Pie that he grew up in a household where racism was frowned upon and inclusivity was embraced and practiced, and this upbringing set the standard for the rest of Miles’ life.
Shelby is another interesting character in the novel. In some ways, she embodies stereotypes often associated with the South and other impoverished American regions, and she lives out the principles of her earlier abuse. Shelby endured years of emotional and sexual abuse from her father. As soon as she turned 18, she became a dancer in a local club where, at 30, she still works. She is a woman who never escaped the place from which she came because circumstances prevented it: despite having the financial means to go wherever she could improve her life, Shelby stays in the small rural town where she has lived her entire life and cared for her drunken, abusive father, Whitey, and her addict brother, Wylie. Via Shelby’s character, Bill offers readers another case study—one of generational trauma. Whitey, Shelby’s father, cannot cope with the horrors he endured during the Vietnam War. He focuses his abusive actions on Shelby’s mother, who eventually left the family, and Shelby and Wylie, going so far as to make Shelby and Wylie perform sexual acts on one another. Shelby’s character is a representation of what happens when an individual cannot escape abusive situations and does not have access to or knowledge of mental health care.
Back to the Dirt also isn’t a book for the easily disturbed or sensitive. It contains graphic depictions of drug use, war, and murder. However, the violence inherent in the rural setting mirrors the violence experienced by veterans like Miles. Thus, the novel’s violent depictions, while at times overwhelming, are necessary. Sadly, too, these depictions are representative of contemporary American culture. The novel adeptly captures the American fascination with guns, the increase in the number of rural militia groups, and an isolationism from the globe that peaked in frightening ways during the Trump Era. It also captures how because of a lack of education and a foundation of inescapable poverty have firmly rooted certain areas and demographics into transgenerational violence and isolationism. All of these elements culminate in the character Nathaniel, a former law enforcement officer who, fed up with local corruption in the force, leaves his county cop career and opens a firearms store. Nathaniel’s character ensnares the nearly radical disillusionment with the government and an extreme interpretation of constitutional values prevalent in rural areas.
Despite its early-2000s setting, the novel’s blue-collar message about rural attitudes towards the American military and the military’s involvement in foreign theaters rings as clearly today as it did during the early days of engagements such as Operation Enduring Freedom. Readers will note how many of the characters frequently comment about how the American government spends money on wars in foreign countries and does not invest in its own citizens on the home front. It is a theme that is sadly inherent in the rhetoric of contemporary, and more specifically right, Republican-aligned politicians who currently question the American government’s numerous packages to countries like Ukraine, with whom the United States signed treaties like the Budapest Memorandum, guaranteeing security. Thus, Back to the Dirt again focuses on the push for American isolationism from rural regions whose populations have been historically impoverished and blame the American government for this.
Back to the Dirt is raw and visceral. In its pages, Frank Bill peels back the layers of individual, communal, and regional trauma. It also examines the American values which have been skewed and manipulated to form inescapable systems of oppression. Its details are grisly, but the question it begs readers to contemplate is “What happens to those who are left behind and forgotten?”
Nicole Yurcaba (Ukrainian: Нікола Юрцаба–Nikola Yurtsaba) is a Ukrainian (Hutsul/Lemko) American poet and essayist. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Lindenwood Review, Whiskey Island, Raven Chronicles, West Trade Review, Appalachian Heritage, North of Oxford, and many other online and print journals. Nicole teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University and is a guest book reviewer for Sage Cigarettes, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, and The Southern Review of Books.
