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David W. Gordon is the award winning author of The Outhouse and An Absence of Faith. The Outhouse is a CIPA EVVY silver medalist for Best Historical Fiction and was awarded an Honorable Mentions in the Great Southern California Book Festival as well as the New England Book Festival. An Absence of Faith received recognition in the Florida Book Festival as an Honorable Mention. His newest novel, The Count of Mount Collier High, is an all ages adaption of a modern Count of Monte Cristo. A former United States Marine, he currently teaches Social Studies in NY State. He is the author of numerous published short stories including, most recently, Memories, published in The Bangalore Review in March. His fourth novel, Amelia O'Brien and the War for Time, is due out in Spring 2018.
Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite
The Outhouse is an historical coming of age debut novel written by David W. Gordon. Jeffrey and his older brother, Jason, had always pondered the mystery of the grandfather they never met. Their father refused to talk about him, save for telling them that the man got on a bus one day and never returned. They even tried one night to get him drunk, but to no avail. It was only after Jeffrey’s Uncle Jack died, and he was grown up with a family of his own, that his father came to visit carrying a newspaper and prepared, finally, to tell him the true story about his grandfather. He was also carrying an old family album whose cover showed the image of a simple country house with a large porch. His father made a request that Jeffrey could not refuse: to write down the tale that he would tell him. It began with the shocking announcement that his grandfather had indeed not left on a bus, but had been killed by his father.
David W. Gordon's historical coming of age novel, The Outhouse, runs the gamut of genres. The tale that Jeffrey's father, Paul, tells about his youth living on the family farm during the Great Depression blends history with strong elements of a psychological thriller as the young boy watches his father, a gentle, loving and generous man, get beaten by circumstance into something dark and awful. As I followed along in his tale, I frequently would stop to consider his father's service in the Great War, and wonder if the odd, unseeing gaze Paul and his older brother, Jack, knew to avoid at all costs, was not war-related PTSD, exacerbated by the death of his daughter and the ever-present threat of the family moving to the homeless encampment known as Pipe City. Paul and Sarah's romance is poignant and lovely, and the story of his own wartime experiences rank this work quite highly for its excellent portrayal of military history.
The Outhouse is a marvelous coming of age tale that spans decades in American history and follows the saga of a family ravaged by a deadly secret and twisted by the overriding need to protect one's loved ones. There's action, horror, history and romance, and somehow it all fuses so beautifully together into one vast, moving and unforgettable tale. The Outhouse is easily one of the best books I've read in some time, and it is most highly recommended.
