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Where All Light Tends to Go
Written By: A.J. Stewart | Issue: 2019/01 - Winter
The Highlands-Cashiers Plateau, and the surrounding Southern Appalachian region, is home to many incredible artists. There are art galleries in almost every town in Jackson and Macon counties featuring the paintings, drawings, and photographs of the phenomenal artists that live here.
Within that venerated crowd of artists are the writers. While it is not a visual art form, the ability to craft an entire world and populate it with rich, complex characters is an ability reserved for a select few. One of them is David Joy.
David is a Western North Carolina native and the epitome of a good ole country boy. More at home in the river with a fly rod in hand, David finds comfort in the familiar. His stories are set in the heart of our region and feature characters that are gritty and uncomfortably real. He has a way of telling stories that are vulgar and violent in a way that is lyrical and poetic, lending a sense of beauty and grace to dark and disturbing subjects.
His debut novel, “Where All Light Tends to Go,” was released in 2015. It tells the story of 18-year-old Jacob McNeely. Caught between being a boy and a man, Jacob is a slave to the world of drugs and violence and his domineering father. It’s not a feel-good story. Your heart aches as you experience Jacob’s vain search for redemption.
David’s most recent novel, “The Line That Held Us,” was released last summer. When Darl Moody accidently shot and killed the younger brother of the notoriously violent Dewayne Brewer, he recruits his friend Calvin Hooper to help him cover it up. When Dewayne goes looking for his missing brother, he unleashes a fury of revenge that will change all of their lives forever. It is a tale of revenge and redemption, friendship and family, and what a man is willing to do to protect the ones that he loves.
David’s other works include “The Weight of This World,” a novel about two local men who essentially raised one another since boyhood; and “Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman’s Journey,” his autobiography. For more information about these works and the author himself, visit david-joy.com .
