Kevin Wilson
Text Publishing
Otago Daily Times, February 18th 2023
“The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.”
In the summer of 1996, the town of Coalfield, Tennessee, is plastered with posters proclaiming this enigmatic message set amongst a background of desolation. Before long, the words and images are appropriated and spread by rebellious teens and aging hippies, eventually becoming cultural icons. Meanwhile, conservatives denounce them as satanic, tearing them down as fast as they are put up. Although the panic eventually dissipates (not without casualties), the origin and meaning of the artworks remain a mystery. Certainly, nobody suspects 16-year-old Frankie Budge or her friend Zeke Brown. But for these two lonely, awkward teens, the posters’ creation and dissemination becomes the defining moment of their lives.
Wilson’s attempt to get inside the head of a teenage girl is not fully convincing, but he successfully captures the adolescent need to find a unique voice and identity, as well as the euphoria of discovering another of your tribe. Similarly, the Coalfield Panic may be underwhelming in the telling, but the novel speaks eloquently to the power of art: “it was beautiful, and then somebody else…made it not beautiful.”
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