Wildcat by Jeffrey Dunn finds romance in an uncanny Appalachian town

Jeffrey Dunn admits he’s dyslexic and has a million words available to him, but sometimes, he says, “I just can’t find the box that I put them in.”

The words he does locate and use in his latest novel Wildcat: An Appalachian Romance (Izzard Ink) are those of a grizzled craftsman who knows well the landscape of storytelling. Take his description of the atmosphere in the fictional town of Wildcat, modeled after Braeburn, a small community near Natrona Heights and Lower Burrell.

“There’s an across the river, and they get across the river,” Dunn tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “And there’s a road that goes up the hill, and there’s a railroad line, but there’s never a train on it — there’s a question whether that train works or not. It’s never brought up. It’s never an issue. And there’s a road in, and there’s a road out.”

Dunn, who taught at Pittsburgh Central Catholic High School and grew up in Braeburn, will appear Fri., Aug. 2 at White Whale Bookstore with Joan Bauer, Don Wentworth, and Kristofer Collins.

In Wildcat — a 168-page book described as a "fictional memoir that wonders if our Appalachian Rust Belt can be redeemed" — Dunn creates a landscape that alternates between idyllic and, perhaps, post-dystopian. The insular community features a hotel that provides communal meals and everyone in town seems to be an artisanal craftsperson, with a self-sufficient aspect that the author only lightly defines.

What is certain is this version of Appalachia is not the Hatfields and McCoys, nor is it Tennessee. It’s a fictionalized Western Pennsylvania location, and while the characters might seem familiar to the author’s friends from high school, they are not drawn from specific individuals.

“They’re all a mash-up,” Dunn says of the characters. But like the unnamed protagonist in Wildcat — he’s referred to only as "New Kid" — Dunn was eager to escape Braeburn.

“Whenever I could, as soon as I could, I got out and went somewhere more interesting,” he says. “My best friend and I would go to the North Side. We’d run around Pittsburgh, we skipped school, that kind of stuff, because there had to be something else.”

When New Kid arrives back in Wildcat after decades away, the romance in the book’s subtitle starts to unfurl — although, again, like most everything else in the novel, it’s atypical. The protagonist is reluctant to seek out his former love, Carolyn. And when they finally do cross paths, after decades apart, their meeting is not what most readers would usually expect.

“They’ve changed. They’ve grown,” Dunn says of the characters. “They’re not kids anymore, and they’re going to live in the same town together and run into each other.”

Dunn sees Wildcat as part of Appalachia, albeit not the cliched, poverty-stricken portrayal that informs film and fiction.

“People complain Appalachia’s always portrayed as this hopeless place, with down-and-out people,” Dunn says. “And there’s a reality to that — that’s not to say that isn’t there. But what would happen if the place had pulled itself together and become something very different?”

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Wildcat: An Appalachian Romance with author Jeffrey Dunn, plus Joan Bauer, Don Wentworth, and Kristofer Collins. 7 p.m. Sat., Aug. 2. White Whale Bookstore. 4754 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield. Free. Registration required. whitewhalebookstore.com