One Foot in Eden

The Southern Gothic literary genre draws inspiration from the Gothic genre. In Gothic fiction, the narrative focuses on supernatural elements, familial secrets, and the interconnection between psychological and social fears. Southern Gothic uses the same elements but adapts them to a Southern setting. Southern Gothic often explores underlying themes such as the history of racism and oppression in the South, highlighting the presence of violence and fear that contrasts sharply with overt expressions of Southern hospitality. The Southern Gothic genre was developed in the early 20th century when the work of Southern authors such as William Faulkner and Flannery O’Conner established and popularized its conventions. Both Faulkner and O’Conner reveal the hidden evils of the South by focusing on racism and the effects of slavery, rather than letting the South hide behind a veneer of Christian goodness. Within this framework, Ron Rash alters the traditional pattern of Southern Gothic narratives by depicting farmers in a rural Appalachian town instead of wealthy Southerners on old plantations. He also juxtaposes his characters’ fear of the supernatural with their Christian moral values to further emphasize key elements of the Southern Gothic genre, and his work focuses on the importance of the land and its history as a reminder of the violence and oppression that lingers in the local culture.

In One Foot in Eden, Rash blends the Southern Gothic genre with the patterns of detective fiction. Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime and mystery fiction. The narrative usually follows the main detective as they gather evidence, interview suspects, and investigate the crime, and the story generally culminates in the solution of the mystery and a dramatic confrontation with the culprit. Several common characteristics involve plot twists, suspense, red herrings, and psychological elements. Rash breaks from the traditional model of following the detective’s point of view and instead employs the Southern Gothic approach of featuring multiple narrators to reveal key details from different perspectives. The character of Sheriff Will Alexander also reflects aspects of the protagonists in hardboiled detective novels, for rather than embodying the omniscient Holmesian detective, his personality reflects that of a flawed, realistic detective who must navigate a host of moral ambiguities. Thus, Sheriff Will Alexander allows his personal history and background to consume him, and this dynamic ultimately prevents him from solving Holland Winchester’s murder. Rash therefore inverts the expected ending of the detective novel, because even though Sheriff Alexander knows who killed Holland, he fails to find Holland’s body and enact justice. Instead, the sheriff never gets a chance to confront the killer because the culprit confesses on his own before suffering an accidental death by drowning. Rash’s strategic mixture of Southern Gothic and detective fiction allows for a broader exploration of human nature, the effects of secrets, and the complex dilemmas of justice and morality.