Breathing Out the Ghost

Breathing Out the Ghost (2008), a noir thriller by Kirk Curnutt, follows three characters gripped by loss, grief, and obsession. Colin St. Claire's son AJ was kidnapped, snatched from outside a store by a pedophile. Colin now drives the interstates of the Midwest, fueled by amphetamines and grief, searching for his lost son and hoping to exact revenge on his kidnapper. Following Colin is a private detective, Robert Heim, who feels strangely compelled to bring Colin back home to his grieving wife. Having lost his license in the line of duty, Heim puts his own fragile marriage on the line, trying to bring Colin back home. Beverly Sis Pruitt, the wife of a farmer, still grieves the death of her young daughter seventeen years ago. Her grief leads her to pay particular attention when a little boy named Chance goes missing at the creek near her home. They take turns narrating the story as it disintegrates and pieces itself back together as each character struggles with what is real and what is not.

The three narrative arcs in this plot revolve around missing children, grief, and obsession. The first is that of Colin St. Claire, a young father whose son AJ was snatched outside a store while Colin was inside. Certain that a pedophile is responsible for the abduction of his son, the grief Colin is experiencing at this profound loss leads him to take extreme action. Leaving his wife behind, Colin searches the Midwest for AJ and the man who took him, looking to exact revenge. Colin drives continuously, not sleeping and taking handfuls of amphetamines to keep himself awake. He thinks of himself as a kind of Ahab of the interstate, searching for his son’s kidnapper, the notorious white whale.

Former private investigator, Robert Heim is on a similar trajectory. Perhaps too dedicated to his work, Heim has now taken to following Colin around the Midwest, hoping to bring him home to his wife. Heim has lost his license because of his obsessive tracking of Colin, but he continues anyway, despite the fact that his own family is missing him at home. Heim puts his fragile marriage and the respect and love of his daughter on the line to rescue Colin, hoping that he can persuade him to give up the chase.



Though Robert and Colin are both tracking the man who abducted AJ, Beverly Sis Pruitt is really the white whale they are seeking. The wife of a working farmer, she still grieves the loss of her daughter, who died violently seventeen years before AJ's kidnapping. Though Beverly wants to remember and celebrate her daughter's life, her husband often pretends that his eldest daughter never existed, choosing instead to live in a less painful present. As tension between Beverly and her husband builds, Beverly hears about the kidnapping of a little boy named Chance, near the creek where she lives. It's clear that there is a connection between Chance's disappearance and Colin's quest for AJ, but in order for the pieces to be put together, the three protagonists have to find each other.

Many sections of the novel degenerate into madness, particularly when Colin speaks in his sleep-deprived, drug-addled haze. Ultimately, the novel is not only a quest to save a missing child but also a saga of grief so enormous that it cannot ever be overcome.

The author of 12 novels and literary criticism, Curnutt’s debut novel, Breathing Out the Ghost, won the 2008 Best Books of Indiana competition and a bronze IPPY award. Curnutt second novel was Dixie Noir. His most recent books are works of literary criticism, including The Cambridge Introduction to F. Scott Fitzgerald and multiple books on Ernest Hemingway. Curnutt was the recipient of a 2007-08 Alabama State Arts Council literary fellowship.