Book Review: The Hanging Woods

It was shortly after the end of the Vietnam conflict, and kids were still just being kids. A portly young'un called "Mothball" got a wise idea from the Guinness Book of World Records. Despite the joking of his friends, Jimmy and Walter, Mothball was determined to beat Mike's old record of eighteen months, and he would need his faithful friends' help to do it. The titleholder, Mike, was a chicken, and 18 months was how long he had survived after having his head chopped off—well most of it anyway. Morbid as it was, the game still seemed innocent enough. After all, where they were growing up, slaughtering a chicken was often simply the first step towards dinner.

Walter found something strange in this game, though. It was not the death so much as the feeling that the dying animal gave him. The feeling of power and strength. He had experienced it before, trapping in the forest with his Papa. Quickly crushing the animal's skull was merciful and natural. It was for sustenance. It was a part of life. But something else he felt was different, consciously different. A surge, a foreign sense of power and euphoria filled him again before gently subsiding and leaving behind an ordinary boy again.

The Hanging Woods draws the reader in at first with wholesome, homespun tales of three young friends growing up in the American south; then, it rapidly spirals into a gripping work of dark suspense. Though the book is distributed as a young adults' novel, it unsentimentally tackles racism, poverty, and mental disorder, challenging any simple categorization by age-group. Readers may be reminded of titles like Huckleberry Finn or Of Mice and Men—if published in today's market, those novels would, arguably, be marketed towards the same young audience.

During an interview over coffee, Sanders said that key images and phrases throughout the story were inspired or otherwise influenced by true experiences. His great aunt told him about the old "hanging woods" in Alabama, where African-Americans were once lynched. The chilling story set the tone for his novel. The "turkey toss" scene, where townspeople throw live turkeys from a rooftop also comes directly from his great aunt's own experience. The river scenes and rope swing in the book are adapted from very real memories of hanging out with friends at the New River when Sanders was still an undergraduate at Tech. Finally, the author's son came up with the title.

I was immediately impressed with Sanders' attention to detail. At one point he describes with morbid humor how the end of an old man's amputated arm looks like a "tomcat's asshole." His vivid description of train rails seemingly levitating under the light of the moon, the ammonia-like smell of chicken shit, and paper bags soaking with boiled peanuts are so evocative that the reader may wonder what is memoir and what is purely fiction.

When writing one of his stories, Sanders often begins with a single scene. The main idea for The Hanging Woods was actually developed out of an unlikely series of events that unfolded along the New River one day when he went swimming with two friends. The suspenseful novel he spun out of that day's inspiration ended up being his thesis project for the MFA Creative Writing program at Hollins University.

I asked Sanders what he thought was the purpose of the writer. Did he believe in an obligation to some moral purpose in a creative work, or was it, in his opinion, simply justifiable to express the self without regard to anything else?

He laughed and said, "That's a tough one," then said that he didn't do it for the money, because quite simply, one can't. That he just wanted to write, to entertain and to express himself and if in the process if he helped someone or taught them something that would be would be wonderful as well. In an email announcing the release of his novel, Mr. Sanders, unknowingly explained it perfectly.

"It's not often that someone can say they're living their dream, but I feel very fortunate to say that I'm doing exactly that."

Scott Sanders is one of this year's winners of the prestigious Camargo Fellowship. He has a B.A. in English from Virginia Tech and an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins. He lives in Christiansburg and teaches writing at New River Community College.