Unraveling Desire and Danger: Why ‘Rough House’ Will Keep You Turning Pages Late Into the Night
Rough House raises some troubling questions even as it artfully and diligently provides answers to many others. The book’s very narrative structure sounds an ominous thrum of uncertainty that competes with Miller’s spirited defense of pro wrestling. Hunter’s saga is bookended by two stark realities, two “heels” (bad guys in wrestlerspeak) that no “babyface” (good guy) could singlehandedly prevent or redeem: the COVID Pandemic of 2021, and the Winder, Georgia mass shooting in September 2024, which took place at the high school where Hunter graduated three years earlier. Miller deliberately lingers on the shooting, pointing out that it was the 385th mass shooting that took place in 2024, in a state with some of the most notoriously lax gun laws in the nation, before proceeding to extoll the virtues of the benefit match held in Winder to heal and unite the community in the wake of the tragedy.
