Boy in the Hole

No spoilers! Boy in a Hole is a captivating account of a family coming face-to-face with its dirty laundry, mostly through the eyes of the young Jacob Murtaugh. From the first chapter, your heart will be entrapped with the thoughts of what will become of Jacob while feeling repulsed by many of his family members, their actions, choices, and discounting behaviors. The multigenerational physical and sexual abuse that has entangled this family system bleeds into young Jacob and his baby sister Melody. Will they survive? How can they be healthy, if they survive, amongst all the toxicity? Although a totally different book than Where the Crawdads Sing, Hersh’s beauty and words are reminiscent of Owens’. Not a word was wasted in the heart-felt, gut-wrenching tale of a young man finding his own identity apart from his family of origin. There is a flow to the writing, like poetry at times. Scenes become so vivid in the readers mind, you are carried away before realizing it to only be slapped back into reality with truth and honesty only honesty itself can demand. The writing is modern; yet, reminiscent of authors often forgotten such as Virginia Wolf. Family secrets reveal truths often discounted in everyday life that will lead you to search for your truth, your new found identity as you reach the end of the final chapter. I’ve never read a book like this one before as it weaves metaphor with themes of coming of age, sexuality, religion, and abuse, where the reader searches for themself in the text and in their current life as they are reading. Can a novel be a self-help book too? If so, this is definitely one and well worth the investment of time and mental energy.