The Last Child – John Hart – A review

Over the past week or so I’ve had the definite pleasure of reading “The Last Child,” by John Hart (or – more accurately, I’ve listened to the audio book).  This is a powerful book – a twisting, turning, thrilling and poignant exploration of the lives and minds of a diverse group of characters.

Johnny Merrimon lost his twin sister several years back.  Not long after that, apparently beaten down by the guilt his wife piled on him for the girl’s loss, Johnny’s father disappeared as well.  The town forgot the loss…Johnny never did.

I am a bit at a loss to explain all of the ways this book got its hooks into me without providing spoilers.  Nothing is as it seems.  Johnny is a strong, focused young man.  He studies history.  He studies spirituality.  His friend Jack is the son of a cop, brother to a future baseball star, and suffers from a bum arm and short stature.  Johnny’s mother, once a strong vibrant woman, is a broken husk of a woman on too many pills and involved with an abusive and jealous lover.  Other children have disappeared, and there are very, very bad men in this small North Carolina town.

As this tale of loss, pain, and redemption unfurls, the mysteries unravel like layers, the story beneath each connected to those above, but digging in deeper.  The Last Child is a cautionary statement about society – the people you interact with every day – the sacrifices you make and the walls that exist between the small worlds that families inhabit.  It’s a statement on all that is good, and all that is bad in the human condition.

Reading this novel I was  struck by the absolute truth behind it – nothing is ever exactly as it seems.  The world is a huge, complex puzzle and you can only ever interact with a very small number of the pieces to that puzzle.  The rest grows hazier and less certain the farther out you try and understand it.

There are no questions left hanging in this novel.  The complexity of the multiple sub-plots comes together with marvelous clarity as, near the end, the pieces begin snapping into place.  John Hart has crafted a masterful story that will captivate readers from beginning to end, and created characters I believe I’ll remember for the rest of my life.  One of the best books I’ve read this decade.

-DNW