The Devil and Preston Black

From my blog at www.lazerbrain.wordpress.com

This first novel by Jason Jack Miller follows the story of Preston Black, a never been famous lover of music, who is trying to make it big in the shadow of approaching middle age. He is mostly stuck playing covers of his favorite musicians, but his luck changes (whether for the better or worse is up for debate) when he simultaneously discovers an old record in a music store with his name on the back of it and meets a mysterious woman named Danicka from the Czech Republic. Preston unknowingly makes a deal with the devil partially incarnated in Danicka, and then tries to find the answers to the ensuing chaos in his life by tracking down the source of the record with his name on it. This leads him through a world of Appalachian superstition and old timey music, ultimately culminating in his seeming redemption through one brilliant live performance after alienating most of his friends and family throughout the entire book.

So, I have to admit that I had a really good time with this one. I read free ebooks from time to time, and have had to train myself to put some books down after a few chapters. Otherwise I'd spend all my time reading crappy books! Anyway, that is where I found The Devil and Preston Black, in the amazon freebie aisle, and really lucked out.

Miller does a great job of making the reader identify with the Preston regardless of personal experience. I found my self getting a little bit depressed when Preston was depressed, and getting angry when Preston makes some really stupid decisions. Plot pacing was perfect. I felt invested in Preston without ever feeling like there was significant down time. I also enjoyed the exploration of Appalachian mythology/ superstition that Preston dealt with on his musical adventure, only as a fantasy/sci-fi fan, I found my self wishing for more of it.

A few thoughts (spoiler alert):

One of the interesting motifs in the book is that “people have a piece of the devil inside them”, or I guess can have a piece of the devil inside them, or something along those lines. I think that Miller wants us to associate the devil with Danicka in a Faustian sort of way, since over pillow talk with Preston she asks him for three wishes and shortly there after two of his wishes are fulfilled in a sideways manner. His buddy Stu never gets to the battlefield (although its because he dies instead of because he is disharged), and Preston's brother Pauly quits the band, but in the process generates a lot of bad blood between them. Not the amicable professional separation Preston seemed to be hoping for. I don't know if the author intended this or not, but I think the complexity of the novel can be deepened considerably if we consider the possibility that more than one devil incarnate and more than one Faustian bargain. I think that Preston, while the “victim” of one bargain was the perpetrator of another. It jibes with the repeated idea that “a piece of the devil is inside me” most developed in Preston's discussion with the priest. The second bargain is even more subtle occurring with Katy the fiddler who was getting her PhD and is Preston's “uncorrupted” girlfriend. At the end of the book just before Preston's big performance, he asks if Katy would play with him on stage, and she accepts. This is significant because elsewhere in the book Katy talks about how she “didn't always want to get a phD” and was in a situation analogous to Preston's prior to his deal with Danicka. Also, we find out that Katy knows about Preston's deal and still seems interested in him. If this a second deal with the devil is present, it adds some nuance to the ending scenes that do not exist otherwise. For example, Danicka's suicide by jumping off the bridge is no longer an unqualified victory over some inhuman demon, but now her character is much more sympathetic, and we can see her as just a woman who made some bad decisions, but is ultimately still partly human. Not only is Danicka's death no longer an unattenuated good, but Preston's success is tarnished as well. He has enticed Katy into a similar deal, and so the ending becomes bittersweet instead of triumphal ending that the book has at first blush.

Anyway, Like I said, I had a good time with this book, and think it has a level of complexity that might be easy to miss on a first read.