Woody is an aging defrocked priest in jail for — well, let’s not say, since that’s not fully revealed until the end. At any rate, he’s getting out with a bad heart and an ex-wife who is engaged to another man but who is still devoted to making sure Woody gets on his feet and starts eating right. Grappling with freedom, his complex relationship with his former wife, and his ailing heart would be enough on anyone’s plate….but out of the wild blue yonder Woody gets a call from another ex-wife who informs him that (1) she is dying of cancer and (2) they have a seventeen year old daughter she never thought to tell him about before. Oh, and the daughter is being chased by some violent gang because she has a flash drive containing materials that will lead to a cache of Civil War era-gold or some such. It’s really better to glance away from that part of the plot because it’s ridiculous, but just know that from time to time people will be in mortal peril and this helps the book along. There’s a lot of good tension, though: between Woody and his ex-wife who does not act like an act; between him and his stranger of a daughter who is about to have a child of her own, and between himself and the reader. We see Woody as a good man, but he begins the book in prison and details about that are slow in coming.
Over Yonder is like Dietrich’s other novels: charming, funny, and filled with distinct characters. Woody’s surprise daughter Caroline is seventeen and pregnant knocked up by some doofus named Tater who could probably be making good money in an auto shop (he knows a lot about cars) if he’d pry his butt off the couch and stop playing on the Xbox. (I just realized Dietrich never referred to the baby as a tater chip. Talk about a missed opportunity!) As the book develops, Woody and Caroline meet and begin getting to know one another, but the aforementioned goldbug gang will occasionally split them up. As is also the case with Dietrich novels, the ending is fairly poignant. I enjoyed reading this for the characters, atmosphere, and Dietrich’s humor, but the latter was sometimes overdone and the aforementioned goldbug plot was not developed in any way that I could take it seriously.
The interstate was littered with advertisements. One of the most jarring things about leaving prison was all the advertisements. Ads on every flat surface, digital platform, and billboard. Product names plastered on people’s clothing. On their shoes. On the bands of their underpants. And ads kept multiplying exponentially as though they were having wild billboard sex every night when the world was asleep and making new ad babies.
Related:
“Sean Dietrich Talks Healing, Hope, and his New Book, Over Yonder“
Reading Freely 
Goodness, just how much gold did those civil war guys hide away anyway? You’d think they’d have spent it on the, you know, actual war OR have run away to England with it or something. Instead, they just leave it lying around while providing cryptic clues.
If I find any hidden civil war gold in my cupboards, I’m writing a book about it!
One never knows. According to the story, Jefferson Davis was gallivanting around the South during the last week of the war with a bunch of gold, but he buried it after he realized the damyanks were on his trail.
I honestly don’t think it could get past the ridiculous sounding goldbug plot. My eyes rolled as soon as you mentioned it in this review, and something tells me they would roll so much my eyes would start hurting if I picked up this book 😆
It gets worse — not only are they looking for Confederate gold that was supposedly buried when Jefferson Davis had fled Richmond and was trying to make his way home to Mississippi, but the gang are never developed beyond a few token and self-contradictory descriptions. Sean’s strength is characters, not action plots.
Sounds like he dropped the character ball too in this one
Mm…Woody, Catherine, and the ex-wife were all strong contenders. I did think he muffed Woody’s crime reveal a LITTLE bit — his prison sentence only makes sense with googling.
(SPOILERS: Woody accidentally hit a woman jaywalking while he was texting in his car. This would ordinarily be vehicular manslaughter, but since he’d had 3 beers it was felony manslaughter which got him the nine years in the pen. Sean makes a VERY slight reference to the public defender not contesting the beer element, but only Google told me that the inclusion of alcohol would elevate Woody’s charge from vehicular manslaughter to FELONY v.m. )
Yeah, that sounds lazy. It annoys me when authors expect you to understand something specific to the US, and even more if it is something that most in the US wouldn’t even know.