American Rust, Meyer - B-

                                               This is the 2009 debut novel by the man who wrote last year's award winning 'The Son'.  The story here, though, is totally demoralizing, as Meyer delves into the disastrous lives of those who somehow  survived the grinding poverty of the post-industrial era in the Mon Valley, southwest of Pittsburgh.  The mill jobs have been  gone for over a generation. Those who stayed exist in a world comparable to that of the subsistence agriculture economy of  a century before - only with no hope for the future. Now they survive on disability pensions, jobs at Walmart, government largesse, and by poaching in the surrounding woods.  Two twenty-year-olds walk into an abandoned building, are attacked by three drifters, and soon thereafter, one of the drifters is dead. This sets in motion a complex series of events involving the two boys, their families, and the town's Chief of Police.  Suicide, alcoholism, living with a permanent disability, and totally irresponsible parenting amidst hopeless poverty are the themes explored, along with a chilling evocation of some time in prison.  I am very familiar with many of the place names throughout this book, because I lived in Pittsburgh in the early 80's, as the wheels were coming off the area's economy.  I've never given much thought to what happened out in all those river towns and now I know.