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Through the Pale Door is a coming-of-age-story set in Columbia, South Carolina. Sarah West, the female protagonist, is a recent high school graduate from Marietta, Georgia, who packs up and leaves her psychotic mom to live with her dad. He gives her a job at the steel mill he manages so that she can earn money before going to Emory in the fall. It doesn’t take long for her to meet and fall in love with Edgewood, a fellow mill worker and artist who secretly paints murals around town and lives in an abandoned jail.
Edgewood’s uncertainty about his future and his art seem to be a welcome distraction for Sarah. As their relationship develops, she encourages his work; in return, he gives her strength to move beyond her mother’s death.
The book is beautifully written. Consider the following line: “My last Saturday morning in Marietta, Georgia, the mountains stood in the middle of my window as usual, bored and tired of being covered with trees. My high school graduation gown swayed in the closet. It caught some wind from the open window and ballooned out, a kind of momentary sail.” And this line: “Some memories I find still lying around in the present tense, like broken glass on a bedroom floor, I’m fifteen.”
Ray’s first novel was worth the wait, and this reviewer hopes that he writes another one soon.
