Murder in the Heartland
1935. Times are hard in the Oklahoma panhandle. In the small village of New Hope, the extended drought has turned the ground arid and the wells dry. Mammoth dust storms sweep across the town. The memory of the murder of a young girl in the recent past still haunts the townsfolk, particularly the sheriff who failed to prevent the tragedy.
And then charred bodies are found in a car in flames, and murders begin again.
This is Dust to Dust, an eight issue comics series written by J. G. Jones and Phil Bram and illustrated by Jones in richly painted watercolor images that bring this world to life.
It’s a world Jones knows well. The trade book edition includes photos of Jones’ grandfather, “Pawpaw,” working on his farm. I suspect Jones also did extensive research to capture the details that permeate the book’s evocative images — the Kayo chocolate drink sign seen from behind the hand-crank pumps at the ESSO station, the barrel at the corner of the clapboard house to collect rainwater, the downtown lined with 19th century buildings that recall the town’s more prosperous days.
The story is also populated with fascinating characters. Sheriff Meadows is tormented by his failure to prevent the earlier murder. The Olsen family has abandoned their farm to travel to California in hopes of a better life. Sarah Grange, a journalist from Chicago, has arrived to photograph the American heartland for the WPA. Mayor Hillyard dominates the town while turning a blind eye to the recent troubles. Also domineered by Hillyard are his naive daughter, Jenny, who is engaged to be married and hopes to leave the small town and his brother, Van, who was never the same after returning from the Great War. The miscreant Waldrop brothers love to stir up trouble, seemingly because there’s not much else to do in New Hope.
The lives of these characters intertwine with the increasingly disturbing events that plague the small town. Blending the worlds of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath with Cormac McCarthy’s dark tales of the U.S. West, Dust to Dust delivers a gripping narrative of tragedy and loss in the heartland of America.
Dust to Dust is available from Image Comics.
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