The Harrow: Review: Dark Eye

Dark Eye is a novel of supernatural vengeance set in South Georgia against the rich setting of the Okefenokee swamp. In 1872, as the comet Ephiseus hangs in the heavens, eleven members of the Ku Klux Klan hang a freed slave and gang-rape his wife, Hattie Hodge. Left for dead in the swamp, Hattie is rescued by a Seminole medicine woman, Chechoter, who heals her and takes her as a student of magic. Hattie becomes a powerful practitioner determined to avenge herself, and her revenge doesn't end with the Ku Klux Klan members' gruesome deaths, but rises again the next time Ephiseus is in the sky, one hundred and twenty-six years later in 1998, when local assistant district attorney Elvin Hutto becomes Hattie's pawn and slowly transforms from an honest man into a corrupt, heartless murderer.

Steven R. Cowan is a relative newcomer to the writing industry, and Dark Eye is his second novel with Southern Charm Press, following Gothica: A Romance of Immortals. However, Dark Eye doesn't have the polish or professionalism of Cowan's first published novel, leading one to suspect that it was either written before Gothica, or hastily after.

Some of the best parts of Dark Eye occur when Cowan eschews the supernatural and concentrates on his own rural Southern Georgia. He paints a lovely picture of the Okefenokee, lingering on the rich abundance of its wildlife, the colorful variety of its flora and fauna. The reader can virtually smell the swamp on the pages, and Cowan serves up small treasures as he describes methods of swamp camping, herbal medicine, and local life. Indeed, far more frightening than anything supernatural are the swamp's natural dangers. Cowan provides a riveting description of a sudden storm that wrecks protagonist Elvin Hutto's canoe:

Rivets fractured, seams in the aluminum separated, and water gushed into the canoe bottom. Elvin jumped into waist-deep water and struggled through the soft, muddy bottom to stable land. (p. 66)

Later, Cowan provides an excellent description of a corpse found in the swamp, lingering over the gruesome details provided by nature's ruthless attack on its flesh.

This is Cowan's strength: vivid, realistic description that evokes and respects the setting of the story. Cowan also does well with other bits of realism, such as a quick flashback to a college dissection, the arrival of schoolchildren interrupting a husband-wife romantic interlude, and the sheriff's calling on the state forensics laboratory to help him analyze evidence. Unfortunately, Cowan's writing in this novel isn't as assured when it comes to plotting and characterization.

The plot revolves around Hattie Hodge's vengeance, both for the death of her husband and her own rape. However, it becomes confused when we see the Seminole medicine woman, Chechoter, carrying out the revenge on the Ku Klux Klan members, instead — this feels unsatisfactory, since it is Hattie who deserves the kill. Once the novel enters the modern time, the plot continues to stumble as Hattie, for no good reason, becomes a Kali-like seductress, using sex and Santeria to bind assistant district attorney Elvin to her and continue her vengeance — this time, on women. Why, the reader has to ask, would Hattie want to avenge herself on these women, and, most especially, why would she choose to do so via rape and murder? Few readers would begrudge Hattie taking vengeance on her rapists — that's an old story — or, perhaps, even vengeance on suceeding generations — also an old story. But this 126-year-delayed vengeance, and the fact that she strikes down women instead of men, makes no sense from a psychological or story-logical point of view. The inclusion of the comet Ephiseus' presence, a silver pentagram, the sign of the dark-irised eye, and an alligator-tooth necklace also muddies the waters, with none satisfactorily explained or used within the tale. Finally, the fact that Hattie not only learns her mentor's Seminole magic, but also — somehow, somewhere — Santeria and more traditional European black magic, is also confusing, as is her choice, as a rape survivor, of violent sex as her weapon.

Indeed, sex as a weapon runs throughout the novel as the theme of Dark Eye. Both the eleven men of the Ku Klux Klan and the Hattie-corrupted Elvin Hutto use rape to subordinate women. When the male characters aren't actually engaging in sex, they're usually thinking about it, usually in terms less than complimentary to women. Very few of the men in the novel are very nice guys — the closest thing to a regular, likeable character is election-worried Sheriff Delton Mariah, followed closely by old swamp local Zann Quigley, although Zann still makes the mistake of letting his small head do the thinking when confronted by a naked woman. On the other hand, few of the female characters in Dark Eye are nice, either. If men are obsessed with sex in Cowan's world, so are women, although two of the characters, Elvin's naive secretary Lana Miller and his loving wife Millie Hutton, seem relatively normal in this regard. The rest of the women in the novel seem to live in a smoky, erotic haze, where a man's gaze is enough to make nipples harden and even the dowdiest old woman keeps negligees in her closet.

This obsession with sex is an example of how Cowan falters in characterization, with erotic passages and fantasies replacing character exposition. It's hard to sympathize with a character who's a slave to something as banal as sex, especially when that sex is manifestly destructive. Any sense of character depth or personality is lost in sex scenes that trot out erotic cliches like exquisite eruptions, juices rising like sap in a tree, mahogany consorts, erect breasts and throbbing cocks. One longs for a flash of personality in the characters to interrupt the overwhelming sense that they are nothing more than beasts at rut. At the same time, the dialog becomes stilted, with now-evil Hattie gloating over Elvin like a cinematic villain, calling him good boy, slave, servant, and cackling out phrases like "You tempt rage in me, as well as revenge. My wrath is equal to my passion and will fall gravely upon you, if you do not answer my call" (p. 155). Dark Eye would have been much improved by avoiding these cliches and letting characters speak and act like themselves, even during sex, rather than forcing them into S&M stereotype straitjackets.

Not surprisingly, then, the two most well-characterized people in the story are the two for whom sex doesn't seem of paramount importance: Zann Quigley and Mille Hutton.

Zann Quigley stands out as a swamplore-wise old coot who is the first to suspect what's going on. He may look like a redneck, but he's smart and wise and well-respected by the locals, working in the local Visitor's Center as the "Swamp Fox." He knows all there is to know about the swamp and proves to be a pretty good hand at research and investigation, too — far cannier than the sheriff. Cowan makes him into a far more engaging character than nominal protagonist Elvin Hutton, and Zann threatens to run off with the story until his untimely end. The story probably would have been stronger had Zann been made the focal character, hunting down the supernaturally driven serial killer through the murky swamp. Unfortunately, he, too, is ultimately helpless against Hattie's sexual power, despite having been forewarned.

Similarly, Millie Hutton becomes increasingly important to the story as we see her begin to suspect her husband of infidelity. Her reactions, unlike those of many of the women in the story, ring true, as she is torn apart by her suspicions and love for her husband. Her troubles quickly engage the reader's sympathy, and she also would have made an engaging focal character, struggling with her horror as she watches her husband disintegrate into madness.

Dark Eye is a relatively weak followup to Cowan's Gothica, and those who enjoyed that first novel will be disappointed with this second. Cowan is a writer to keep an eye on, but the publication of Dark Eye hard on the heels of Gothica was a mistake, and readers may want to wait until his third novel — which, hopefully, he and his editor will spend more time polishing and perfecting before bringing to print.