Nothing More Dangerous - Allen Eskens

Nothing More Dangerous, by Allen Eskens, is set in mid-1970s small-town Missouri where fifteen-year-old Boady Sanden lives alone with his mother. Boady, a high school freshman, is very much an outsider at the Catholic school he’s attending for the first time. He spends his days there either being completely ignored by his classmates or bullied by some of the older boys - and Boady’s one real goal in life is to save enough money so that he can leave town on his own as soon as he turns sixteen. He’s had just about all of life in rural Missouri that he can stand.

Things start to change, though, when a black family - who have a son near Boady’s age - move into the old house across the road from the Sandens. Young Thomas Elgin is a city boy, and now he is as unhappy about being stuck in rural Missouri as Boady is. Neither boy particularly wants to admit that they need a friend, but because no one else their age lives within shouting distance of the isolated road they live on, the boys find it hard to ignore - or avoid - each other. After a rough start, surprising themselves, they become close friends. And that’s when things begin to turn ugly.

Lida Poe, the black bookkeeper at the area’s plastics factory has supposedly disappeared along with at least one hundred thousand dollars of the company’s money. Her disappearance is all anyone in town can talk about, but it shouldn’t have a thing to do with Boady and Thomas, or their friendship. And it doesn’t, until the two boys go camping and decide to do a little snooping on their own. What they discover out in the woods starts a chain of events that will prove deadly dangerous to Boady, Thomas, and some of the people closest to them.

I experienced Nothing More Dangerous via its audiobook version, and if you enjoy audiobooks at all, I recommend this one. Kevin Stillwell, the audiobook narrator, uses a combination good-old-boy/country drawl delivery that gives life to the story being told by young Boady Sanden. Stillwell’s atmospheric voice enhances the innocence with which Boady begins telling his story while slowly coming to the realization that what he thinks he knows about his hometown and its people is not at all as simple as he has believed it to be. 

Bottom Line: Nothing More Dangerous is a coming-of-age novel in which two boys, in just a few short weeks, are forced to learn the harsh realities of the world they live in. Thomas experiences a level of racism he had not known in the city, and Boady figures out some things about himself, those closest to him, and his own culture that he never suspected. The boys “grow up” to a degree that neither could have done on their own; they could have only done it together. This one has a bit of a “fairy tale” feel to it, but I totally bought in to it in the long run. 

Allen Eskens