Ending a good book is always difficult, and finishing Eden Mine by S. M. Hulse was no exception. The narrative voice, the gradual unfolding of the story, and the characters’ growth (often a struggle) kept me engaged throughout.
Eden Mine is Hulse’s follow-up to her debut novel, Black River. It also won the Christianity Today Book Award for Fiction in 2021.
Hulse vividly paints a picture of a dying Montana town reeling in the aftermath of domestic terrorism, with family relationships stretched to the breaking point, and friendship strained in a fallen world yearning for hope.
Jo, a paraplegic but strong-willed woman, wrestles with her loyalty to her brother, Samuel—who cared for her after their mother’s death—and her disapproval of the bomb he detonated at a courthouse. The explosion was Samuel’s response to the government’s plan to seize their home to build a highway. In the blast, a pastor’s young daughter is critically injured by shattered glass from a storefront window where the church meets, located across the street from the courthouse.
Asa, the pastor, struggles with why God allowed his daughter to be harmed, and why his gift of healing cannot help her.
We learn about Samuel through Jo’s memories of their upbringing and through notes he wrote to her on a map while on the run. Though the narrative shifts between timelines, this structure deepens our understanding of who Samuel is.
Skilled Word Crafter
Hulse opens Eden Mine with taut prose and vivid detail. Here’s the gripping first passage:
“My brother’s bomb explodes at 10:16 on a late April Sunday morning.
I don’t know. I’m a hundred and fifty miles northwest, in the house he and I share. I’ve just taped together the first cardboard moving box, and it sits on the hardwood before me, yawning empty.
Later, I’ll imagine the explosion with such regularity and intensity the details become etched in my mind alongside my own memories, sharp-edged and indelible. I’ll be hounded by those details, haunted. The shattering glass, thousands of jagged pieces slicing the air, capturing and fracturing the light. The enormity of the sound, the brute physicality of it, and then its numbing absence. The clouding dust, the crumbling rubble. The blood.
But at 10:16, I know nothing. Packing my biggest problem.”
Intriguing Questions
For the most part, this is a character-driven story rather than a fast-paced, action-filled one. But the questions it raises kept pulling me in, and it ends with an emotional punch as the characters confront the aftermath of the bombing.
Will Jo help the police find her brother? How will she face him if he’s captured alive? Will the pastor’s daughter survive? What is Jo’s place in the community now that she’s the sister of a domestic terrorist? How will she interact with the pastor when their paths cross? And where will she go when eviction day arrives?
Despite her paralysis, Jo is a strong and determined woman. She rides a horse using a contraption her brother built for her, gets around town in a specially designed vehicle, and channels her emotions into her art, using painting as a way to make sense of the world. Yet, making sense of things is a challenge in itself. More questions arise: How did Jo become paralyzed? What caused her and Samuel to be orphaned? These are difficult truths for Jo to come to terms with as well.
As a character-driven narrative, Eden Mine explores how Jo, Samuel, and Pastor Asa face disruptions in their lives and undergo transformations—not always in neat ways. Trauma impacts each of them differently. Eden Mine offers hope, but accepting it remains a choice.
Can Eden be recreated? You’ll have to read to find out.
