On Cove Mountain

Memoir of a Prodigal

By: Ian Duncan

Narrated by: Ian Duncan

Only the lost can be found. On Cove Mountain is the true story of author Ian Duncan’s commitment to a mental institution in 2001 and his 16-year battle to escape the stigma, trauma, and legal consequences arising from his hospitalization. Here, in unflinching detail, he describes his passage from confinement in a padded cell to freedom on the peculiar mountain that became the setting for his spiritual sojourn.

On Cove Mountain relates the shockingly commonplace ways a nice young man goes gently mad and the odyssey undertaken to find freedom, self-understanding, and peace. This is the story of one man’s exchange of depression for joy, bondage for victory, loneliness for love. This is the story of how he was found.

©2020 Ian Duncan (P)2020 Ian Duncan

A story of humility and triumph

Every man who has ever had to endure trials should hear this true story, read by the author. Ian Duncan tells of his trials and ultimate redemption with a sincerity, power and pathos that gripped me, brought tears to my eyes, and made me cheer out loud. A great listen.

The story is beautiful, the prose is beautiful, grace is beautiful.

This book is so good that I can't even bring myself to knock off a star for the appalling lack of copyediting (oh, the perils and pitfalls and poverty of being a self-published writer! oh, the occupational hazards of being a copyeditor!) and the similarly appalling mispronunciation of scores of words throughout the otherwise excellently read audio. The story is beautiful, the prose is beautiful, <I>grace</I> is beautiful. I stayed up way too late last night in an iron-fisted story grip before finally succumbing to sleep. Finished it this morning.

I don't have a lot in common with the author. My ears perked up at the mention of Catawba Valley, since Catawba County, North Carolina, is the epicenter of American Bosts. Our first New World ancestor, Johannes Bast (the German <I>a</I>, as in Bach, was quickly Anglicized to an <I>o</I>) is buried there. The valley evidently extends into Duncan's home state, Virginia, so no real connection there. It's probably been thirty years since I was able to hike a mountain (just little Gates...I was hoping to do Manadnock another year, but my family went without me the day before I was scheduled to arrive). I haven't been through the same suffering and trials and grief and sin and darkness. But they are the grammar and vocabulary of a universal language with myriad mutually understandable dialects. And mercy, though a second tongue to all of us who learn it, more than makes up for any other lack of shared experience.

I think <I>On Cove Mountain</I> ties with Andrew Klavan's <I>The Great Good Thing</I> for best-written memoir I've ever read. Unfortunately, also like Klavan, Duncan's other books just don't appeal. Zombie funguses just aren't my cup of kombucha. Or maybe they are, since beverage funguses also repulse me. So I'll just have to come back and reread this one sometime. You should read it, too.

God can clean up a mess. If you need hope, read.

If audio books had pages, this book would be a page turner. A story that puts flesh on a God of providential grace. Never say, "there is no hope."