Novel set in VERMONT (a pact with the devil)

• Book: The Devil in the Valley
• Location: Vermont
• Author: Castle Freeman

Review Author: tripfiction

A very well and amusingly written update of the Faustian legend by Marlowe… and not, I am pleased to say, as black as I feared it might be. A retired and somewhat crabby alcoholic schoolteacher in rural Vermont is ‘befriended’ by Dangerfield (‘the account man, the closer…’) on behalf of the Devil. The schoolteacher, Langdon Taft, is offered anything he wants in this world before he is transported to hell on Columbus Day – just seven months hence. He accepts the contract. He is a pretty obvious rogue, and our presumption is that he will choose a younger age, power, wealth and sex (not necessarily in that order…). He does not believe in the Devil or Hell and thinks he will be able to contrive an escape from the pact.

He also does not behave as we think he might. Instead of hedonistic pursuits he pays a very sick child’s hospital bills, gives a wife beater a lesson he will not forget, prevents a dodgy bank foreclosing on a local farmer, rescues a drowning girl, and even attacks school bus bullies. In short he uses his contract to perform good deeds. Which poses a real dilemma. Does he deserve to go to Hell? The devil would argue that the powers he has given him have enabled him to get pleasure from his deeds – and that he deserves to pay for this pleasure he would not otherwise have had. He also had the reward of a flirtation with an attractive female State Trooper (though more chaste than Dangerfield, who organised the event, had planned for it to be…). Taft would argue that he has successfully fooled the Devil by diverting his power to do good and help the community in which he lives. That he has won.

Then there is the parallel story of Calpurnia, a 98 year old woman in a hospice waiting to die… Gradually her story merges with that of Langdon Taft as we head for the conclusion.

The Devil In The Valley is not a weighty tome. It is just 192 pages of not too small type – I read it in two sittings totalling a couple of hours. It is a simple idea, well executed – and it works. I enjoyed the book.

This review first appeared on our blog where we also talk to Castle about writing, Vermont and more……

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