Customer Reviews

Bad Ground

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Cramer is a wonderful writer. In this, my first taste of his prose, I discovered bitter sorrow, sweet redemption, and tidbits of wisdom with dashes of humor.

"Bad Ground" begins with an orphaned teenager named Jeremy. He has his share of scars, but he holds onto an innocent faith in God. This faith is tried and tested when he ends up living and working with his uncle Aiden. Aiden, otherwise known as Snake, leads a crew of miners outside of Atlanta. He's a morose man laboring under guilt and physical deformities.

Cramer fills his story with memorable characters, believable dialogue, and situations that defy description in this review. I was laughing out loud at points, wiping a tear from my eye at others.

Like "The Secret Life of Bees" or "Gap Creek," this story contains many riches wrapped around spiritual themes. Written with grace, "Bad Ground" demands to be read by the masses.

Deep in the earth, brilliant clusters of quartz crystals lie hidden in fissures and crevices-"pyramid-tipped spires huddled together like a miniature city, cracking the light into a thousand rainbow shards...salted with pinpoints of iron pyrite, glittering like tiny stars." But such treasures can only be found in fractured, unstable, dangerous earth-places miners simply call "bad ground."

Bad Ground is the story of Jeremy Prine, a seventeen-year-old boy who has been orphaned and who needs to grow up, and fast. His mother, who died of cancer, left him the only thing she could give - a letter. She tells him to find his uncle Aiden. "When you find him, stay with him. He'll try to run you off, but don't let him. Do whatever it takes to stay with him. You have something I couldn't give him, and he something I couldn't give you. I won't tell you what - you'll just have to find out from each other. When you find it, you'll know."

Jeremy, a sheltered and timid teen, heads into the world to find this mysterious uncle. He finds him at a mining site where his uncle leads a crew of miners deep in the earth, digging tunnels with a massive mining machine. His uncle turns out to be a terribly scarred, bitter man who is as afraid of the light as his nephew is of the dark. Despite his uncle's best attempts to cast him off, Jeremy stubbornly perseveres, heeding his mother's words that he must not give up. Jeremy comes of age, deep within these same tunnels.

As in his other novels, Cramer crafts strong, believable characters that the reader cannot help but care for. Bad Ground is certainly not a thriller, but relies instead on rich symbolism, powerful character development and the promise of redemption that seems always to lurk just beyond reach.

Another powerful and stirring novel, Bad Ground reaches an emotional, satisfying conclusion. Cramer is fast becoming one of my favorite novelists. I highly recommend his books.

You know you're having an unusual reading experience when an hour or so into a novel it suddenly dawns on you that you've been utterly captivated by, of all things, the inner workings of a hard-rock mine. But that's what happens with BAD GROUND, which in July deservedly won the Christy Award for a contemporary novel released in 2004. W. Dale Cramer is such a marvelous writer that he manages to appeal to both male and female readers --- no mean feat in the general market and a nearly impossible one in the gender-targeted world of CBA fiction.

With nothing but a duffel bag and $63 to his name, 17-year-old Jeremy Prine sets out from Tennessee to find his Uncle Aiden, who disappeared from the family radar screen a decade earlier after an accident in which he was disfigured and Jeremy's father was killed. All Jeremy knows is that his uncle works in a hard-rock tunnel for a company in Atlanta, which is where Jeremy heads the day after his mother's funeral. His quest is less his than his mother's; in a letter she wrote before she died --- and that Jeremy read after she died --- she urges him to do whatever it takes to find his uncle. Teenager that he is, he hitchhikes and walks until he finds the man who is now known as Snake.

You can pretty well assume that with a name like Snake, this guy isn't exactly elated when Jeremy appears at his work site. But the kid is family, and even though he'd rather forget the family and everything his nephew represents, Snake takes him in and gets him a job with the tunneling operation. It's dangerous and gritty work that's tough on even the coarse, grizzled miners who have been at it for years; for a young guy like Jeremy, who was reared by his mother in a sheltered environment, the mine represents an alien world in which he must somehow find his way. It doesn't help, given the rough lives and language of the miners, that Jeremy is openly Christian. Or maybe it does.

What Cramer does with that story line is nothing short of extraordinary. You think you know where the story is going, but that's not where it goes. You try really hard not to like Snake, but you can't help yourself. You're so sure that Jeremy's faith is going to intrude on an otherwise wonderful book, but it never does. And you don't know a thing in the world about mining, but you get all wrapped up in the technical descriptions, and you decide, despite your ignorance, that it all rings true. Most of all, you are astonished that such a delicate story can be told in such a harsh setting.

Cramer creates a richly textured and highly detailed world in which three-dimensional people work and play, love and hate, ignore each other and interact with each other. I'm telling you, these people are real. I know each and every one of them, and I'm guessing you do too --- even if, like me, you've never been near the kind of environment they live in. The author clearly knows human nature and knows it well.

Bottom line: Cramer is a brilliant writer, positively brilliant. This is one of those novels that makes you utter those words every author longs to hear: "You've got to read this book."

I just finished Bad Ground. Dale Cramer's
ability to make us laugh, cry, bring us to the edge of our seat with suspense and teach us truth at the same time is truely refreshing. The quality of his writing rivals any of the New York Time Best Sellers, and in my opinion far surpasses them. His writing is such that I would not be ashamed to share his books with my grandfather or my grandson. Despite what is so often reported that women read and men don't, his are the kind of books that men will identify with the characters and love the action, and women will find just as enjoyable. I'd love to see this as a blockbuster movie. I can just see Mel Gibson playing Snake and That kid from Bourne Identity playing Jeremy.
I can't wait to read Sutter's Cross, and his upcoming release. P.S. The deer hunting scene
has to be the best deer hunting story ever.

W. Dale Crammer puts pen to paper briliantly in his second novel 'Bad Ground'. This book is filled with realistic, sometimes quirky characters that you won't forget when you turn the last page. This book has everything that makes for a great read: believable situations, a little romance, humor, insights into the spiritual and characters that deal with everyday issues that the reader can relate to. The technical info in the book may be hard to grasp for anyone not in the mining field, it was for me, but it sounds accurate.

This book would be great for anyone. I love how one of the main characters, seventeen year old Jeremy Prine is open and free speaking about his faith and is a role-model and witness for his uncle Snake who is a disfigured miner and those around him. Usually it's the other way around with older generation leading the younger. I love how, inspite of his mothers death and the situations he finds himself when he goes in search of snake he holdsfast to God. Young people are able to make a difference inspite of age or experience and this book shows that.

It's a very enjoyable and eneteraining read.

What a picture Mr. Cramer paints. This is a picture of real pain, a picture of promise, a picture of regrets. Do not misunderstand my title. I said that this is a read for SOME Christians. Why? Because there will be people who may read a few pages into it, and say, "AW, God can't work in that way!" But I'm here to tell everyone, even the skeptics, oh yes He does! This is a book for people who have had real pain in their life. This isn't a book for people without a backbone. Need I say more? Oh yeah!

One thing you can't deny is the humor that Mr. Cramer uses in parts of this masterpiece. You also see just how creative one can be. You join 17 year old Jeremy after his mother dies. Her request is for him to find his Uncle Aiden. Uncle Aiden can give Jeremy something that his mother could never give, while Jeremy can give Aiden something that his mother could never give to his Uncle. His uncle is a miner. And with names (or nicknames)such as Geech, Weasel, Nanny, Tunk, and then of course Snake, who is Jeremy's Uncle Aiden, you see a wide variety of vision put into this book! But I wasn't the least bit surprised when the name "Bubba" came up once or twice halfway through!

So, when you read this, get ready to feel something. Don't try to think too much, the book will do that for you. Get a cup of coffee, maybe a couple of homemade cookies to go along with this. Just have a good time, and see how our awesome God works! A very rare treasure indeed!

I didn't think a book about blasting holes in the earth would appeal to me, but Cramer's eloquent and haunting prose drew me in. As I read, I remembered the feeling I got when I first read Christy by Katherine Marshall, that although both wrote about people I don't normally encounter (miners, folks from Appalacia), their taut characterizations made me want to befriend the characters, giving me a desire to spend my life peeling away the layers of all types of folks, elevating the dignity of every human being. Though I was sometimes bogged down by the technicalities of the mining operation, I found myself cheering for the protagonist, an orphaned boy becoming a man. Cramer has a lovely way with language, so beautiful I wanted to savor his words-words like "Burrowed into his sleeping bag, he slept as one who has no else to be, and the stars kissed his sleep like a mother" (p. 16). If you are looking for a literary work with a redemptive message, Cramer's Bad Ground will satisfy.

This is my first Cramer book. I've had it sitting on the to-be-read shelf but always opted for something action-packed. I tend to lean towards mysteries, espionage, spy, spiritual thrillers and take-over-the-world kind of books so I kept bypassing "Bad Ground" for something that sounded more page turning. Well I'll tell you what...this book was excellent. For some odd reason it became a page turner even though there really wasn't a reason for it. Let's face it, you know how it's going to end. The characters however were very in-depth and so real that you truly feel like you know them. Cramer's writing skill is fantastic. Not only is it smooth and easy to read, it helps to craft the story into a living creation. The reader will experience many spiritual truths in such a way as to bring them alive and close to home.
Some have complained about the tunnel information being hard to understand but I didn't find it to be true. There's even a diagram to help out. I checked the web for tunnels in Atlanta and found they dug one very close to me place of work. Hope it doesn't cave in.
From now on I'll be reading W. Dale Cramer. For this type of book it gets five stars.

BAD GROUND is the kind of book that grabs hold of you right from the beginning, keeps you going till the end, and leaves you feeling warm and satisfied like you've spent time with good friends. Apart from Jeremy and his uncle, there are a host of wonderful characters, each one unique and memorable in his own right. Dale Cramer makes you care about them all. The story and setting are unusual--a good deal of it takes place in a mine--but Dale's descriptive prose, humor, and honesty let the reader feel included. It's a story with real depth that doesn't preach. It's an original, with a voice that calls the reader home. SUTTER'S CROSS was Dale Cramer's warm-up. BAD GROUND is a home run hit. Don't miss it!

When I finished this book (in a matter of a few short days) the characters remained with me. It's one of those novels that leaves a lasting effect. Dale is a gifted writer and it shows in Bad Ground, just as much as it does in his first novel, Sutter's Cross. Two very different stories, yet both are filled with great characters, excitement, and inspiration. I highly recommend Bad Ground.