Josh Ritter and the book ‘The Great Glorious Goddamn of it All’

Musician Josh Ritter of Moscow, Idaho published his second novel almost fifteen weeks ago, on September 7th. The coming-of-age novel of a young boy’s experience during the last days of the lumberjacks looks back on a legacy left by a deceased father and the men, women, lifestyle and woods that offered Weldon Applegate the life he would share as part of the novel titled The Great Glorious Goddamn of it All.

(Josh Ritter wrote The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All, a novel released on Tuesday, September 7th, 2021).

Weldon Applegate narrates his own story as a ninety-nine years-of-age, looking back to a time following the loss of his father in a lumberjacking accident in what I take to be northern Idaho. Applegate was young, without the presence of a mother, as an approximately thirteen-year-old with a team of lumberjacks working a harsh plot of land for logging. The adventures of his ancestors, back multiple generations preceding his father, were fresh in Weldon’s mind when confronting the need to age into manhood on the spot.

(The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All by Josh Ritter was first released fifteen weeks ago tomorrow).

The going was rugged, the lumberjacks with their saloon life was disappearing, and the ability or desire for something else was just not in the story for Weldon. The story Weldon did have included some degree of aid intermixed with a large helping of rivals that, while difficult in the moment, formed the man we heard from more than 80-years later when he was looking back on life. The idea of rivalry, and the depths of where the rivalry took Weldon Applegate, shine through the pages with engaging detail.

(To date, Josh Ritter has published two novels. The first novel, Bright’s Passage, was released on June 28th, 2011).

The detail of description of relationships in helping to form the man that Weldon Applegate was becoming, and had become in old age, demonstrated a tough son of a gun with a bit of a hard-earned ornery streak. I found the exposition of the storytelling engaging. The people inhabiting Weldon’s past and present were salt-of-the-earth types that feel relatable, which helps The Great Glorious Goddamn of it All work. The lyrical nature of the novel’s language works for me. I grant The Great Glorious Goddamn of it All by Josh Ritter 4-stars on a scale of 1-to-5.

Matt – Monday, December 20, 2021