The Height of Land by M. C. Benner Dixon
Orison Books, 2025
Review by Elaine Thomas
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The title of M. C. Benner Dixon’s The Height of Land refers to a topographical phrase used to describe a watershed. The “height of land” is the high point along a ridge, a point where water must flow either to one side or the other. That phrase captures perfectly the choices protagonist Red Boscage faces throughout this evocative debut novel. A series of watershed moments challenge him repeatedly to choose the better path, whether to go along with the expectations of his community or whether to follow his own deep inner yearnings.
Nineteen-year-old Red lives with his mother and siblings in Chert River, an agrarian setting in a future time and place. Collective second-hand memories of trauma are ever-present; failures and losses of bygone “Wasted Generations” dominate Chert River residents’ day-to-day lives. The community is closely bonded, but focuses on industrious work, leaving little or no time for dreams or beauty. Their pragmatic existence abides no talk of gods, or of souls:
When the world broke apart, the beliefs of the past slipped away… Their descendants
handed down stories of the Wasted Generations—half-remembered histories of holy
wars and rival sects, fanatics and swindlers. Their gods were burdens, it was said.… [F]or
the children of the Tribulation, a single god took the place of all that had gone before,
and its name was Persistence.
Yet Red, an introspective, daydreamy boy, feels compelled to search for the gods he’s long dreamed of finding and following. A chance encounter at an early age with an old man who held strong belief in a god set his mind and heart to wondering: “Red pushed toward that place where soft-hearted beings dwell. He could get there, he thought, if he just pushed hard enough. He could reach the god’s unseen world with malleable rules and soft-hearted love. Such a world felt like a promise.”
Red’s spiritual yearning and the numerous ways he seeks to find purpose and discover meaning provide the engine that drives this novel forward. The Height of Land can be described in numerous ways, all of them accurate: speculative, post-apocalyptic, post post-apocalyptic, a compelling coming-of-age story, a quest as our hero discovers (and returns to) a place he belongs, and the ubiquitous human struggle to balance collective life and individual conscience. By far the most dominant theme here lies in Red’s incessant yearning. Height of Land can best be understood as a philosophical or theological novel. Of necessity, a story so based in spiritual yearning relies heavily on interiority. The questions and conflicts of Red’s inner life lead him at every step, both into and out of external situations and choices. “Something in him was reaching for something else, nameless and unknown.”
New environmental threats to Chert River’s existence arise after a violent storm, with extensive flooding of “endless swaths of farmland.” The community votes on whether or not to leave their homes and land, and Red faces a first difficult choice. Does he base his decision on community and family? Or, does he heed his own soul’s longing for his gods? To what is he more loyal, the connections and love he feels for other persons, the physical land and setting he also loves and thinks of as home, or the gods for whom he so deeply yearns? After all, Red reasons, “When one serves a god, it is for life.”
One of the more beautiful aspects of this book is Red’s connection to and the author’s descriptions of the physical environment. Even Red’s name is taken from the earth. The opening line of the prologue is, “His name was Red, like the dust of the earth that was his birthing table, his playground, and his father’s burial plot—the iron-rich soil that was now the stuff of memory alone.” The devastation wrought by the “Wasted Generations” involved not only spiritual and cultural deprivation, but also extensive environmental damage. This environmental portion of the narrative feels particularly relevant, almost a warning to our own careless contemporary moment. The land, the water, the natural environment touch Red’s sensitive soul. In his spiritually oriented mind, “the cruelty of nature always had something supernatural and conscious in it.” Failure to respect and care for the environment—or to care for beauty in general—carries costly consequences.
Similarly, the responsibilities of citizenship weigh heavily on Red, another concern that feels relevant to our own contemporary situation. What’s the right path for an individual whose inner longings and convictions don’t align with the dominant collective view? From the moment he’s able to vote in Chert River, “everyone told Red over and over how voting was a symbol of adulthood, the commitment of your body and your voice. It was both public and personal, they said, a matter of integrity.” His vote on whether or not to leave (and essentially abandon) Chert River is a vote that implies potential separation from his community and his family.
Later in Red’s story, personal integrity, and the sometimes painful choices it can force, will again pit Red against his chosen community. In the nearby city of Exchange, he meets a charismatic priest and a group of clandestine worshippers who seem to understand and share his spiritual yearning. Yet he finds himself pitted against their views and practices when he discovers a group of migrants being treated as “other.” These “non-subscribers” receive resources only after designated insiders (“subscribers”) have obtained enough. With any threat of scarcity they’re forced to do without. Anyone who breaks this rule or is uncomfortable with what they view as its inherent cruelty is quickly labeled a dissident and shunned.
Ethical questions and post-apocalyptic and coming-of-age threads blend seamlessly with Red’s direct theological or philosophical questioning. Such direct questioning is more often found in nonfiction than fiction, often specifically in autobiography. Two favorite books sprang to my mind in searching for comparable literature, but notably in two very different ways. Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild is about a real person with a decidedly different fate from fictional Red. Yet it similarly conveys the deep longing of a young man to find his own meaning in the world, even if at odds with the remainder of his society, and especially in his solitary search to experience fully the natural world. Thomas Merton’s Seven Story Mountain captures a young man’s yearning for connection with his god, the willingness to turn away from former paths when convinced that is how one is being instructed, and the wisdom to deal with obstacles encountered along one’s path. That Red’s inner voice brings to mind two such revered works speaks to the depth of his search and his story.
The novel is filled with watershed moments when Red must make choices of conscience, belief, and authenticity—to flow to one side or the other. But even beyond this obvious meaning, the phrase “height of land” reminds the reader that high indicates elevated. The title, and Red’s search, subtly convey what it means to stand on holy ground. Red himself seems to affirm this in his recognition that “(w)e love a thing, a place, a person—and by loving, we make it holy.”
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M. C. Benner Dixon lives, writes, and grows things in Pittsburgh, PA, where she serves as the Adult Program Director for Write Pittsburgh. The Height of Land won the Orison Fiction Prize. Millions of Suns, a collection of craft essays co-authored with Sharon Fagan McDermott, was published in 2023 by The University of Michigan Press. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Funicular, The Los Angeles Review, The Hopper, Fusion Fragment, Appalachian Review, and elsewhere.
Elaine Thomas is a former seminarian and hospital chaplain. Her writing has been published in numerous journals and magazines, including SugarSugarSalt, Pembroke Magazine, North Carolina Literary Review, and moonShine review. She’s won the Rose Post Nonfiction Competition of the N.C. Writers Network and second prize in the short story competition Stories Through the Ages.
ID: Cover of The Height of Land by M. C. Benner Dixon.
Psaltery & Lyre 