Emotional and Thrilling: A Review of Luke Rolfes’s Sleep Lake
Sleep Lake, the debut novel from writer Luke Rolfes, follows an interesting cast of characters through the messy trials of life. The novel is a gripping page-turner; you never know what will happen next in this domestic drama meets crime thriller.
Rolfes is the author of Flyover Country and Impossible Naked Life, two collections of stories. These works have won awards including the Georgetown Review Press Short Story Contest and the Acacia Fiction Prize from Kallisto Gaia Press, respectively. Sleep Lake was published in June of 2024 by Braddock Avenue Books. Rolfes co-edits the Laurel Review, a literary journal out of Missouri, and teaches creative writing at Northwest Missouri State University. His work appears in Issue 12 of Miracle Monocle.
Sleep Lake follows a husband and wife, Thomas and Janie, as they both traverse the path of infidelity. Alongside these primary characters, Rolfes stages a complex cast of characters, including an incarcerated brother, a sister with nowhere else to go, a friend turned unintentional drug mule, stoner retirees, and the serial rapist who incites fear throughout the entire community, lurking just out of sight. These characters’ lives are intricately intertwined and illustrate the true highs and lows of our anxiety-ridden society.
The compelling cast of characters is not all Sleep Lake has to offer. We’re told in the beginning of the novel that the dam around Sleep Lake will eventually burst. In this way, Rolfes adds an ecological disaster on top of a character-driven story. This choice allows for deeper characterization (revealing all of the characters’ deeper flaws), while also making room to show the traumatic experience of an entire town flooding.
Rolfes also uses his debut novel to touch on many aspects of humanity, never shying away from the darker side of the story. He illustrates Thomas’s unsavory actions towards his mistress, Janie’s sister Ava and her descent into obsession and fear, and Janie’s feelings of inadequacy and her shortcomings as a teacher in a rough area. His exploration of these deeper emotions offers a look into his characters’s psyches that is vital to the novel as a whole.
Since reading the book, one particular passage has stuck with me: “It’s funny sometimes how we stand on all these actions of the past—success and failure alike. The dead people are mountains beneath us, and we walk on top of all they’ve done.” Not only does the line resonate with me, but I think it serves as an important illustration of the ways in which the lives of the characters in the novel are interwoven.
Overall, this was a fun and entertaining read that will leave you thinking “what just happened?” It’s a rollercoaster of emotions and events that are sure to keep you engaged—even if it’s just to find out what happens next. If this review has piqued your interest, Sleep Lake can be purchased directly from Braddock Avenue Books or from Amazon.