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“Kickdown,” in its moving evocation of a place and a people and a way of life at a pivotal point in our history, finds that same nearly perfect balance.

This phenomenon is a “kickdown”: the benign industry term for when abnormal pressure, building in a well, suddenly releases — in this case, “like something out of Dante’s Inferno.”

After the kickdown, and the discovery of benzene bubbling in a creek on the Dunbar property, Susan begins to come out of her paralysis.

“Kickdown” by Rebecca Clarren, Arcade, 232 pp.,

These issues are always in the background of Rebecca Clarren’s impressive debut novel “Kickdown,” which looks at the lives of people in and around the small Colorado town of Silt.