Tragedy on the Mountain
Could you love a man suffering from post traumatic stress disorder if he abused you?
She got down on her knees in front of the television. He pushed one side of her face hard against the TV screen, saying in his practiced voice, “No! No!” This was the way she loved him now.What if the cause of his trauma was a single impulsive moment where his ex wife murdered his daughter with a hatchet? What if his other daughter was lost in the woods? What if he was also suffering from dementia?
He has lost his daughters, but he has also lost the memory of losing them. But he has not lost the loss.In her debut novel, Idaho, Emily Ruskovich explores themes of tragedy, loss, love, and forgiveness as she slowly reveals the answers to some of these questions in this gripping story.
IDAHO: A NOVEL By Emily Ruskovich 322 pp. Random House $17
While the story is filled with intrigue and mystery, Ruskovich poetically dances around the murder itself and instead chooses to focus on the human aspects of the people that are left behind to deal with the consequences. We get glimpses into the memories of the people involved. Spanning multiple decades and told from the perspectives of several different people, each chapter provides a new memory, giving us another piece of the story.
Selfishly, one of my favorite parts of the book in the context of the tralev project is when Ann speculates on the meaning of the word “Idaho”. The etymology of the name is shrouded in mystery, hoaxes, and misinterpretations. Ruskovich adds to the lore of the name with her own version of the origin story which results in “a state named after a little girl named after another little girl.”
When suddenly she ran away from him, toward the door that led into the halls of Congress, he called out to her, Ida! Ho! Come back to me!In the afterward, Random House published an interview with Ruskovich discussing the origins of the book and story. Ruskovich claims that her goal was to tell a real and compelling story. Unlike a traditional mystery where the reader get's the satisfaction of discovering what happens in the end, Ruskovich focuses on the "unanswered question that the living victims will be forced to chase forever and forever, without resolution." The empty feeling that you might get when you finish this novel is compensated by the beautiful prose, rich characters, and wonderful story that Ruskovich weaves together.
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
Most popular posts this month
- Lev Lazinskiy
- Lev Lazinskiy
- Setting up ANTLR4 on Windows
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- Terminal RSS Reader With Nom
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making from Ludicity
- No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass from Fernando Borretti
- Is it ethical to use AI? from charity.wtf
- The logical destination of LLMs from Andy Bell
- Revised rules of engineering leadership. from Irrational Exuberance
- The circus freaks of open source from Drew DeVault's blog
- Clanker: A Word For The Machine from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
- I ran a half-marathon! from gluecko.se
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Fujifilm X100 vs Leica Q vs Ricoh GR
Notes on three fixed-lens camera lines
via The Map is Mostly Water July 18, 2026Make It Work vs. Make It Good
There are two wolves inside of me, lol. Some days I want to be a “designer”. Other days I want to be a “developer”. On the days I find myself wanting to feed the developer, it’s often because making something “work” seems easier (and more impressive) than...
via Jim Nielsen’s Blog July 18, 2026Robert Jon & the Wreck at The Tin Pan
Robert Jon & the Wreck at The Tin Pan I have lived in RVA, and before that Fredericksburg, for over 20 years. I have looked at shows at The Tin Pan on multiple occasions. Every time I passed, because the idea of seeing a loud rock and roll show in a dinner...
via O'DonnellWeb July 18, 2026Generated by openring