Pineville Trace

Pineville Trace
Wes Blake

Etchings Press, University of Indianapolis
ISBN 978-1955521345
140 pages
Order at bookshop.org or other online retailrs

“I always tell the same story. Over and over. It’s the story about getting what you want. And the story about not getting what you want. It’s the only story I know.”

Wes Blake tells a parallel story in Pineville Trace. Like a photo and its negative, the narrative follows similar characters and situations as Frank, a former faith healer and revival preacher, is rewriting over his past to make sense of it. Following the Buffalo—or, at least, at cat named Buffallo—Frank Russet mulls over his past in a layered narrative that would lead you deeper into the wilderness with no way out. Wes Blake’s debut novella plays with time, begging the reader to follow along and trust the ride. Frank is a protagonist filled with guilt, searching for meaning in the forest with his cat, Buffalo.

“[Frank] had become an actor in his own life. Reading a script.”

As Frank traverses the shadowy edges of society, he encounters remnants of his former self, forcing him to confront his deepest regrets and desires. Blake’s haunting prose captures the essence of a man on the brink of transformation, urging readers to ponder the thin line between redemption and damnation.

From the back cover: 

“A man escapes from prison only to find he can’t separate himself from his past. Pineville Trace is a story of a man on the run. Wes Blake renders the tale with great empathy and in language that’s so lyrical it practically lifts from the page. Blake is a writer to watch.”
—Lee Martin, author of the Pulitzer Prize Finalist The Bright Forever

“Despite his own certainty that he is a fraud, Frank emerges for the reader as the truest kind of prophet, following a cat named Buffalo and searching for “the old magic”, seeking an answer to that universal question: what ultimately releases a man from his own demons? A haunting debut!”
—Julie Hensley, author of Five Oaks

“Wes Blake’s Pineville Trace is a Pilgrim’s Progress through an America of our shared past; at times ardent or breathless, it is a dream book in the form of a road novel, a vision quest about finding a house in the trees. Accompanied by a wise cat, Blake’s protagonist is on the lam after becoming a seeker. Together they persevere, drawing strength from Shawnee visions, other restless wanderers, and the call of a sanctuary up ahead. Pineville Trace is a story of a light in the window with reminiscences of darker water. Ghosts come down the mountain. Blake’s novel shines into the spirit and reveals the struggle of our living in such worldly and spiritual conditions.”
—Matthew Haughton, author of Stand in the Stillness of Woods

“Pineville Trace examines what happens when loneliness becomes habitual. Frank, a once charismatic southern revival preacher, walks away from a minimum-security prison in eastern Kentucky with the only friend he has left—a yard cat named Buffalo. A terse, poignant, and sometimes bitter look at a man’s journey to tether his interior world to a meaningful anchor in the physical one. Blake’s debut manages to expertly capture that feeling of standing in an empty motel hallway, moving away and toward something, depositing you inside your own private emotional purgatory, the in-between time when you are invisible to everyone except yourself.”
—Tina Andry, author of ransom notes

Interview with the Author

Etchings Press: When did the idea for Pineville Trace begin? What was your writing process when creating your novella-in-flash?

Wes Blake: I had written about the character, Frank, before, and thought that I had already told his story. But, on a warm February day in 2022, I was driving on a winding road on Pine Mountain near the Bell County Forestry Camp prison, and I realized that Frank was not through with me. The idea for Pineville Trace came to me while I was driving, and I used my phone’s voice recorder to get the idea down before it was lost to me. The strangest part was that right after I recorded my first ideas for the novella, a car like Frank’s black 1959 Buick LeSabre drove past me on that isolated road on Pine Mountain. What are the odds? It was eerie. But it was clear that Frank wanted his story to be told. Writing Pineville Trace was exciting. A lot of the writing process was an act of discovery and was charged like the original idea for the book. I loved being able to write about Frank again. I had missed him. Several years had passed since I wrote about him, and it was like spending time with an old friend that you didn’t think you’d ever see again. I wrote every day while I worked on the book. I sat at my writing desk and wrote in the early weekday mornings before dawn and would write longer on weekends. It was a fun challenge to try and make every chapter a flash story with its own energy that would stand alone, but also develop and deepen Frank’s story. Writing the chapters as flash stories offered opportunities to create meaning through structure—placing one flash chapter before, after, or near another, enhanced meaning. Similarly, Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, Ron Rash’s Nothing Gold Can Stay, The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake, Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, and Gurney Norman’s Kinfolks also create meaning through structure while developing an overarching character as their individual pieces add up to something larger.

After letting the first draft sit for a few months, I picked it up again and read it with fresh eyes. I went over the novella four or five more times, polishing until it was as good as I could make it. I wanted to make sure I got Frank’s story right. After working on the book for a year and a half, I was sad to say goodbye to Frank.

EP: What was the inspiration to have Frank be a former revival preacher? Do you have personal ties with it or was it a career that felt right for his character?

In the summer of 2014, I was at the Disquiet writing conference in Lisbon, and someone said, “write about what obsesses you.” That phrase stuck with me. It felt important. I walked along the cobblestone streets in Barrio Alto— a hilly neighborhood above the Tagus River—at dusk thinking about that. Write about what obsesses you. As I walked along, and the sky got dark, I thought about what did obsess me. And that’s when the inspiration for Frank came to me—the inspiration for him as a revival preacher. I remembered when I was in high school in the nineties, my good friend, Mark, and his family were always telling stories about his great uncle—a famous revival preacher who had lived in Kentucky and Mississippi. And their stories about him were so charged. They were fascinating. I loved hearing them. And I would always ask about him. Even after I’d heard all the stories, I’d ask to hear more, hoping they had forgotten one or would tell one in a different way, adding some detail they’d forgotten. He was short and small, but people told stories about how they saw him lift a car by its back bumper. He was described as genuine, down to earth. A careful and interested listener that remembered what you told him and wanted to hear it, no matter who you were. Yet he made a small fortune doing traveling revival and radio shows. He was supposedly an influence on Elvis Presley. The way people spoke about him was unlike I’ve heard people talk about anyone else. People loved him. They loved to talk about him. You could tell by the stories they told that this person made their lives more lively. That he gave them something that stayed with them. He made their lives bigger. Some people swore they saw him perform miracles. And there were also stories about him disappearing alone for weeks at a time into the wilderness of the Barrier Islands in the Gulf of Mexico. There were fraud accusations. It was hard to reconcile who this person really was.

And my idea for Frank was born then, remembering all these stories and how obsessed I had been to know who someone like that really was.

I wanted to write about a revival preacher like Frank because someone like that is a mystery. They’re impossible to know. I wanted to discover who Frank was. When was Frank genuine and when was he putting on a show? Was it always one or the other? Did he find his way and lose it? And, if so, could he find it again? I wanted to find out. Revival preachers—especially in the south—are such a uniquely American breed. I can’t imagine them anywhere else. They offer and contain maximum possibility, salvation, ambition, magic, charisma, passion, excitement, and deception. They were the first rock ‘n’ roll stars, going from town to town and making people feel something they couldn’t feel in their everyday lives. Revival preachers were all heart. They got your attention and made you feel. I wanted to explore who someone like that really was. What was their interior life like? What parts of them were genuine? How did they change over time? What did success or failure do to them? What were they like offstage? I wanted to understand.

EP: Etchings readers had a common interest in Frank’s cat Buffalo. Are you a cat fan? Did you always know that Frank would have a cat companion?

WB: Yes, I love cats! My wife and I have two cats—a calico named Pig and a tortoiseshell named Queak, and we had three for a long time. I always wanted a cat when I was a kid. My parents convinced me to quit sucking my thumb by bribing me with a pet cat because they knew I wanted one more than anything. But we couldn’t get one because we found out my brother was allergic. So, I hung out with my grandmother Nanny’s cat every chance I got. Like cats are wont to do, Buffalo worked herself into the story. In an earlier story about Frank, Buffalo made a brief appearance. But, like Frank, she wanted to be a major character and have her story told. When I first got the idea for Pineville Trace, I did envision Buffalo being a larger part of Frank’s story. But I didn’t know to what extent and how she would be involved. At this point in Frank’s life, he is tired of people and himself, so a cat has the best statistical chance of becoming his companion.