“Later, two cops would ask, more than once, how it was she didn’t see her. She could have offered up any number of theories: the dirt and mud on the woman’s back, the distance of twenty or thirty yards between the fence and Caren’s perch behind the driver’s seat, even her own layman’s assessment that the brain can’t possibly process what it has no precedent for. But none of the words came.

I don’t know, she said.

She watched one of the cops write this down.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (MAR 22, 2014)

The past and the present are inextricably bound, and history is examined, re-examined, and refined within the context of a changing world of ideas, new evidence, and reform. Attica Locke demonstrated this in her first crime book, Black Water Rising, (nominated for an Orange Prize in 2009). Once again, she braids controversial social and historical issues with an intense and multi-stranded mystery.

Locke artfully informs Cutting Season with the dark corners of our nation’s past and the ongoing prejudices and failures to live up to the enlightened ideals of equality and justice. Her fiction tells the truth through an imaginative storyline, and she enfolds these issues and more in this lush historical novel of murder, racism, and family. The title of the book refers to the season of sugarcane cutting.

Between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, a pre-civil war sugar cane plantation, Belle Vie, sits on eighteen acres of land, owned by the affluent Clancy family. The Clancys are descendants of William Tynan, who was hired by the federal government after the civil war to oversee the plantation. Tynan did such an outstanding job, he was eventually deeded the land.

Converted to a tourist attraction/historic preserve, with restored slave quarters and dramatic re-enactments of plantation life, Bell Vie is also a favorite setting for weddings and other festivities. Caren Gray, a single mother, manages everything at Bell Vie– the grounds, events, and personnel. Caren also has ties to the early descendants of the plantation, a complex history that unfolds gradually and evocatively. She is the great-great-great granddaughter of a slave named Jason who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and was never found.

Abutting the land to the west sits 500 acres of actively farmed sugar cane, also owned by the Clancy family and run by the Groveland Corporation. Since Groveland started managing the land, the families that worked there for generations were pushed out and replaced by migrant workers.

The book starts off with a bang, just like Locke’s earlier book did. On the border between Bell Vie and the sugarcane land, an employee stumbles on a murdered women, a migrant worker. When the local sheriff prematurely accuses a Bell Vie employee with a criminal past, Caren resolves to solve the crime herself. She subsequently learns that there have been sinister shenanigans involving Groveland, including support of the budding political interests of Raymond Clancy.

The atmospherics and setting of this novel, as well as the increasing tension and artful story, keep the reader attentive. Locke is not just skillful, but fragrant in describing the landscape of this largely provincial community. Her prose is sensuous and plump, and the visuals are ripe and resonant.

“…beneath its loamy topsoil…two centuries of breathtaking wealth and spectacle—a stark beauty both irrepressible and utterly incapable of even the smallest nod of contrition—lay a land both black and bitter, soft to the touch, and pressing in its power. She should have known that one day it would spit out what it no longer had use for, the secrets it would no longer keep.”

Like Locke’s first book, the plot is multi-faceted, with subplots often taking center stage and progressively weaving into the main intrigue. The theme centers on the uneasy link between the past and present, and how they must be reconciled. Caren’s desire to protect her child and expose corruption across echoes of time struck a deep chord in me.

The pacing is initially taut, although the characterizations gravitate toward standard. I was a bit disappointed in the relationship between Caren and her ex, Eric, because Black Water Rising’s main character, Jay Porter was so arresting—tilted, ambiguous, and most of all, unpredictable. The action between Caren and Eric is stilted, and feels convenient to the arc of the story. However, Caren’s voice is sensitive, intimate, and tenderly portrayed, despite being easily anticipated.

As the novel progressed toward the climax, Locke veered to formula. Perhaps she tried too hard to please readers of conventional genre. Cutting Season lumbered as it neared the final moments, becoming too ungainly and stitched together. The past and present fall into place too readily, yet I appreciate what Locke was trying to do in the juxtaposition of time and circumstance. Her intent was poetic; she strove for equanimity, but it got too exorbitant and contrived.

Despite these complaints, Locke’s talents are evident on every page. Locke’s sensual approach to language and narrative filters her flaws, mitigating them. The joy of reading comes from being absorbed in Bell Vie and the sumptuous layering of story. There’s a fine line between writing platitudes and conveying an awareness of racial issues and conflicts. Locke is generally nuanced, but she occasionally turned toward heavy-handedness, especially toward the finale.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 172 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (September 17, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Attica Locke
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Black Water Rising

Bibliography:

• Black Water Rising (2009)
• The Cutting Season (2012)

“There’s a lot of heartache in these mountains, that’s what my grandma Alice always says.”

Book Review:

Review by Jana L. Perskie (MAR 12, 2014)

The setting for Redemption Mountain is located in Red Bone, West Virginia, in the Appalachian region of the Southern United States. Ranked by median income, it is the poorest state in the union except for Mississippi. The major resource in West Virginia’s economy is coal and the state is a top coal-producer in this country, second only to Wyoming.

From the beginning, in 1863, the state of West Virginia mined coal. While it has been blessed with a vast assortment of natural resources, coal is found in 53 of 55 counties, it is a mixed blessing. The downside of this blessing is about the the environment, the land, the people who mine it, and the unfortunate miners’ families who watch their loved ones leave for work never to see them again.

Why the statistics? This novel’s storyline, is based on the poverty of West Virginia miners and state residents as related to coal mining. West Virginia has been treated like a colony by big business. Mining disasters have rocked the state many times over. The controversial practice of Mountain Top Removal or Strip Mining plagues West Virginia, ripping off the tops of mountains to uncover the buried coal seams, leaving behind worthless acres of land. Advocates of mountaintop removal point out that once the areas are reclaimed, the technique provides premium flat land suitable for many uses in an extremely mountainous region. They also maintain that the new growth on reclaimed mountaintop mined areas is better able to support populations of game animals. And, of course, mining coal provides jobs. On the other hand, critics contend that mountaintop removal is a disastrous practice that benefits a small number of corporations at the expense of local communities and the environment.

Natty Oakes, a woman in her late twenties, lives in Redbone, McDowell County, West Virginia. Her grandfather, her mother and her uncle live on their farm at the top of Oak’s Hollow on “Redemption Mountain.” Natty is the mother of two children, 12-year-old Boyd, “The Pie Man,” who was born with Down Syndrome, and his younger sister Cat. Natty is married to Buck Oakes, a former high school football hero who got her pregnant in their senior year, a pregnancy which resulted in marriage and the birth of “The Pie Man.” Buck, perpetually unemployed for lack of jobs, is an angry, abusive man who takes out his failures in life on those around him, especially his wife, who works, (sometimes for no fee), as a home health aide to retired miners. She also runs the children’s library and coaches the local soccer team.

Charlie Burden, an attractive man in his late 40’s, is a partner in a New York City engineering firm, Dietrich Delahunt & Mackey, that has designed and is supervising the construction of a gigantic state-of-the art, clean coal-burning electricity generating plant in McDowell County, West Virginia. Charlie lives in a posh Westchester community, (think Bill & Hillary Clinton), with his wife Ellen, who spends much of her time involved in the activities of their country club. The couple have a son, a successful stockbroker, and a daughter who is attending university. The marriage is strained, primarily because Charlie and Ellen have developed different values over the years. She wants to move into a larger, 5 bedroom, pricier property even though the children are gone from home. Charlie is tired of his work with the firm. He resigns from the country club, it no longer suits him to spend time there. He longs to return to the field and do some hands-on engineering. “Why does my job get more and more boring and my career feel so unfulfilling as I get wealthier and more successful?” When the opportunity presents itself, Charlie grabs it…although it is not the job in China, supervising a huge construction project, that he wants. He thinks that if he takes on the generating plant project in West Virginia and is successful, he will eventually be assigned to China where Ellen has refused to go, nor does she plan to visit him in West Virginia.

Burden is uncomfortable after spending a night in the sterile company-owned condo in Bluefield, WV, just outside of Red Bone. When he decides to move to the town he has the opportunity to acquaint himself with the Red Bone locals. He meets Natty and her son “Pie Man,” his first friend. Natty is a runner like him and coach of “The Bones,” an under-14 soccer team. His next door neighbor is Pullman (Hank) Hankinson, a retired teacher and the man who plays cribbage with him. Hank also educates Charlie in the ways of Corporate America and how it has effected West Virginia. “The big companies come here, they make a deal in Charleston, and they take the coal, the timber and the gas, and they get rich. And the people get poorer and the land gets tore up, and the water gets fouled, and it’s OK, ’cause there ain’t hardly anybody left in the coal counties, and besides, they’re all just old and poor and uneducated and don’t matter to no one.”

Charlie finds himself happier and, oddly, more at home here than he is back in New York. His decision to leave the Bluefield condo for the tiny apartment in Red Bone impacts many lives, including his own.

This is a novel of the turmoil Big Business can bring as various elements opposed to Burden and his mentor, senior partner Lucien Mackey, try to take over the firm. It is a novel of political corruption and powerful Charleston law firms run by bogus “good ole boys” who know how to make things happen – like obtaining a permit for a mountaintop removal coal mine to fuel the new electrical plant and buying farms of local residents who are in the way of “progress.” And it is a novel of poor but resilient people, good people, whose lives can be shattered in an instant if Big Business has its way.

I am fascinated by the historical aspects of Redemption Mountain. The sad story of the Appalachian miners, their families, the environment, dirty politicians and Big Business is, unfortunately, a black mark on our country’s past and present.

Apart from the seriousness of greed and Corporate America in this poorest of regions in the United States, Redemption Mountain has its moments of humor and humanity. The characters, who make their homes in Red Bone, are extremely likable, just as the characters from Corporate America are detestable. This simplicity in character development is a weakness in the novel. There are the “good guys,” and the “bad guys,” with few shades of gray. The storyline is somewhat predictable…although there are a few big surprises….surprises which make the novel more complex and interesting.

Overall, I enjoyed Redemption Mountain and find it to be a good and interesting read. I learned a lot about coal mining, Strip Mining, and how destructive it can be to the land and the people who dwell there.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 41 readers
PUBLISHER:	Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (June 25, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Jana L. Perskie
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Gerry FitzGerald
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: LONG MAN by Amy Greene

Bibliography:

• Redemption Mountain (June 2013)

“You can’t stand against a flood, Annie Clyde.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (FEB 25, 2014)

“You can’t stand against a flood, Annie Clyde.” Oh, yes she can. Or at least die trying. A descendant of the native Cherokees, Annie Clyde Dodson has deep-rooted connections to the land of Yuneetah, Tennessee. Long Man, the river that courses through, is tempestuous and moody but the farmers here have learned to corral its powers to make their living off the land. The Tennessee Valley Authority though, has other plans. A dam has been built upstream and in a matter of a few days, Yuneetah will be under water. Annie Clyde is one of the last holdouts. She just can’t up and leave the land which she wanted her daughter, Gracie, to know and love. And as much as her husband has plans to find factory work up north in Michigan, Annie can’t stomach the thought of a stark existence away from the natural surroundings she loves.

As Long Man opens with a setting in the immediate post-Depression era, the town is just a couple of days away from being flooded by the dam’s waters. To make things worse, a steady, heavy rain has been falling and the water levels everywhere rise slowly. Along with Annie and her daughter, Gracie, there’s Annie’s aunt, Silver Ledford, who makes her meager home on top of a high cliff overlooking the valley. Tensions are running high enough as it is; practically everyone has left town with a relocation package but Annie has just managed to show yet another TVA man, Sam Washburn, the door. She does not want to move. To make matters worse — much worse — Gracie, Annie’s daughter, disappears. Could it be the town’s bad boy, Amos, who has taken her? Or is it the equally menacing flood waters that are to blame?

Using the child’s disappearance as a driver for the story, Amy Greene movingly explores the complicated relationships between the town’s various players and also their deep and abiding respect for the land. The hardscrabble countryside comes gloriously alive in her telling and it is the most arresting aspect of Long Man.

The story itself is slow to unwind and lurches forward precariously, often coming to almost a complete halt as Greene outlines relationships and events through a series of flashbacks. While these back-and-forth movements can feel jerky and disorienting, the pace picks up eventually — it is interesting to note that the tension builds slowly along with the rising floodwaters. It’s almost as if Greene were working consciously to have the book’s tempo increase gradually with the drama of the plotline.

While farming itself can be a challenge (one which Greene points out well), Long Man occasionally lapses into too much starry-eyed worship of the vocation’s faithfuls. The romantic visions that Annie Clyde has seem overwrought at times: “She didn’t understand the power company’s reasoning. She didn’t need electric lights when she could see by the sun and moon. She had the spring and the earth to keep her food from spoiling…if a person didn’t come to depend on material things, it wouldn’t hurt to lose them.”

Where Long Man does succeed, is in showing how even the fiercest of people have weak spots that can be chipped away at and weathered over time. The ties that bind can take various shapes and forms and lend themselves to fluidity. Not many can hold their ground when it comes to a rising and powerful flood — whether that change takes the form of raging waters or technical progress. As Greene writes: “The dam would stand in memory, but not of their individual lives. Only of a moment in history.” Even that, you soon realize, is more than what most of us can hope for.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 12 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (February 25, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Amy Greene
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Bloodroot Another dam story: The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels

Bibliography:

• Bloodroot (2010)
• Long Man (February 2014)

“Iris Dunleavy?” asked Mary. “Is she the plantation wife? She dresses so well for a lunatic. She had the most colorful flounces on her skirt the other night.”

Book Review:

Review by Judi Clark  (FEB 9, 2014)

This is Kathy Hepinstall’s fourth novel… and I’ve read all four, so obviously I like this author. She writes a different book each time and thus one never knows what will be found upon picking up her latest, although one can be sure it will be both literary and lyrical, no matter the tone and subject.

Blue Asylum takes place during the Civil War years on Sanibel Island on the west coast of Florida.

A judge finds the main character, Iris Dunleavy, insane essentially for hating and embarrassing her husband, “Wives were not supposed to hate their husbands. It was not in the proper order of things.” Her rich husband pays extra for her to be cured at the institution with the best reputation, the SANIBEL ASYLUM FOR LUNATICS which is managed by British born psychiatrist Dr. Cowell, who stubbornly believes that Iris is insane because a judge declared it. But Iris insists that she is not insane, that she was merely escaping from a hateful husband and cruel man. As she reveals her horrific story bit by bit, we can see that while she may not be clinically insane, she may have been crazy mad considering the decisions/actions she undertook (and continues to undertake).

She befriends the doctor’s 14-year-old son Wendell and another patient, Ambrose, who is suffering from something that happened during the civil war. She longs to escape and eventually does but with devastating effects.

I liked many things about this book, but I didn’t “love it,” at least not as much as I did The Absence of Nectar and Prince of Lost Places. But I did enjoy it immensely even though it is a little heavy handed on the message, not unlike her debut (and Oprah book club choice)  The House of Gentle Men.  Then again, given headlines such as Todd Akin’s comment on legitimate rape, it may be that heavy handed feminist historical literature is still necessary.

Hepinstall captures the historical detail of well and it is very visual as she sets a mood and imagery that plays out well both as metaphor and setting:

“Dawn broke soft and clean on the island of shell and marl and current. It was a day like any other, one more day in a season when marking the days was difficult, since the balminess was resolute and the birds were attuned to the tides, the tides to the moon, and the moon to the lunatics, under their crazy spell, waxing and waning in the accordance with the fluctuations of their madness and the depth of passions. A group of terns had gathered at the edge of a calm sea, and a single raccoon, caught after a daylight, skittered out of the dune vegetation and into the forest, leaving behind a loggerhead nest full of ruined eggs, shells broken and half-formed turtles spilling out in the sand.”

Hepinstall considers this a love story… and it is, but not the happy kind. This novel is an excellent choice for book clubs.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 139 readers
PUBLISHER:	Mariner Books; Reprint edition (April 9, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Judi Clark
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Kathy Hepinstall really humorous blog
EXTRAS:	Website for Blue Asylum Reading Guide Interview with Kathy Hepinstall
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Prince of Lost Places  The Absence of Nectar The House of Gentle Men

Bibliography:

• The House of Gentle Men (2000)
• The Absence of Nectar (2001)
• Prince of Lost Places (2003)
• Blue Asylum (2012)

“What China is doing is fighting, like she was born to do. Fight our shoes, fight other dogs, fight these puppies that are reaching for the outside, blind and wet. China’s sweating and the boys are gleaming, and I can see Daddy through the window of the shed, his face shining like the flash of a fish under the water when the sun hit. It’s quiet. Heavy. Feels like it should be raining, but it isn’t. There are no stars, and the bare bulbs of the Pit burn.“

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (FEB 8, 2014)

This bighearted, voluptuous, riveting book – one of my favorites of the decade – is filled with contradictions. It tells an apocalyptic and ancient tale but its topic is fresh and timely. It is told without any pretensions yet it’s lyrical and bracing. It focuses on the microcosm of a family under pressure yet its theme is universal and its messages integrate age-old mythologies.

As the book opens, China – the pure white pit bull – is turning on herself, trying to eat her paws. The winds of Hurricane Katrina are gathering force. And the narrator, a young precocious and sensitive teenager named Esch, is realizing that she is pregnant. These forces and situations add up to classic tragedy, but Jesmyn Ward has other things in mind. Esch and her brothers – Skeetah, whose life and passions revolve around his prized dog and her puppies; Randall, whose dream is to get a basketball camp scholarship; and, Junior, the youngest – are a unit who support each other.

As Katrina closes in — as the internal storms play out — we view a world that is steeped with violence and tenderness. Nothing is as expected. Let me interject that I share my home with two dogs and every cell of my body abhors pit bull fighting. Yet when the inevitable scene arrived, it shattered every single one of my expectations. Skeetah massages and speaks to China like a lover; his rival coaches Kilo, the other dog, calling him “son.” Some of it is written in love language: “China flings her head back into the air as if eating oxygen, gaining strength, and burns back down to Kilo and takes his neck in her teeth. She bears down, curling to him, a loving flame, and licks.” This is a book that dares you to confront yourself at an elemental level.

As an added level, Jesmyn Ward weaves in the Medea and Jason story and other Greek myths. Esch is young in years, but old in wisdom: she already knows that “There is never a meeting in the middle. There is only a body in the ditch, and one person walking toward or away from it.” While she is tethered to earth – her father’s hands are “like gravel,” her brother’s blood “smells like wet hot earth,” her mind is unleashed and floats to the sky.

The tenderness – yes, tenderness! – between Skeetah and China, the bond between China and Esch (“China will bark and call me sister. In the star-suffocated sky, there is a waiting silence…”), and the desperation and love of this family elevates it far beyond most other contemporary books I have read. A day after reading it, I am still in its thrall.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 285 readers
PUBLISHER:	Bloomsbury USA; Reprint edition (April 24, 2012)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Official blog for Jesmyn Ward Wikipedia page on Jesmyn Ward
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Other National Book Award Winners: Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen

Bibliography:

• Where the Line Bleeds (2008)
• Salvage the Bones (2011) 

Nonfiction:

• Men We Reap: Memoir (September 2013)

“The bees came the summer of 1964, the summer I turned fourteen and my life went spinning off into a whole new orbit, and I mean whole new orbit. Looking back on it now, I want to say the bees were sent to me. I want to say they showed up like the angle Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary, setting events in motion I could never have guessed. I know it is presumptuous to compare my small life to hers, but I have reason to believe she wouldn’t mind; I will get to that. Right now it’s enough to say that despite everything that happened that summer, I remain tender toward the bees.”

Book Review:

Review by Jana L. Perskie (JAN 20, 2014)

Fourteen year-old Lily Melissa Owens has been a motherless child for ten years now. It fills her with anguish to think that she, at age four, had a hand in the accidental shooting death of Deborah Fontanel Owens, her own mother. Lily’s life has been shaped around this incident, and she has never ceased to yearn for her mother, (for a mother’s love), although her memories of the actual woman have been blurred by time. In fact, Lily has very little memory of that dark day’s events, and is totally dependent on her miserable, sadistic father, T. Ray Owens, for any and all accounts of her mom. The only person who shows her any affection is Rosaleen, a black peach-picker T. Ray brought in from the fields to care for his child.

At fourteen, Lily is extremely bright, loves to read and has a talent for writing. One of her teachers has encouraged her to think about a college education, although her father tells her she will be lucky to go to beauty school. On July 4, 1964, Lily’s birthday, she walks Rosaleen to town so the black woman can register to vote. President Lyndon B. Johnson just signed into effect the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and Rosaleen feels pride in doing her civic duty, as does Lily in accompanying her. The two are harassed by three white men, one of whom is the biggest racist in town. When Rosaleen tries to defend herself, she and Lily are thrown in jail. In reality, back then in the American South, given what Rosaleen did to defend herself, and to whom she did it, she very well could have been beaten to death on the spot. T. Ray picks up his daughter almost immediately, and painfully punishes the girl. She manages to escape, though, and to break Rosaleen out of the hospital where she is recovering from her afternoon’s encounter with Jim Crowe.

One of the few mementoes Lily has of her mother is a small picture of a black Madonna with the words, Tiburon, S. C. on the back. Lily has saved some money from selling peaches at her father’s roadside stand, and is certain that if she and Rosaleen can reach Tiburon, she will find out about her Momma, and they will somehow be safe. And, sure enough, in Tiburon, S. C. Lily finds a connection between her Madonna picture and a trio of fairy godmother-like women – the calendar sisters May, June, and August Boatwright. These black spinster sisters live in a Pepto-Bismol pink-colored house, on a large tract of land outside of town. They keep bees, sell honey and other bee by-products, and their label, the Black Madonna Honey Company, is the same as the picture keepsake that Lily has from her mother. It is here that Lily learns, among many things, that “without a queen, the hive will die.” She understands that she must replace her own queen, her dead mother, or she will shrivel-up inside.

August Boatwright, Mother Figure, (with capital letters!), earth mother, and Madonna all-in-one, takes Lily and Rosaleen in without question, gives them jobs and a home – at least temporarily, until they can live and grow in an environment which will allow them to thrive. And along the way Lily will learn some basic truths, common for both bees and people.

All kinds of neat tidbits and facts about bees, their lives, habits, care, beekeeping in general, and honey production are woven throughout the book, and the details are fascinating. Each chapter is headed with a quotation about bees. However, as important and interesting as bees are as themes in The Secret Life Of Bees, sometimes the narrative is too sweet and sugary for my taste.

Sue Monk Kidd writes beautifully, lyrically, about a southern white girl’s unusual coming of age. However, the novel reads, frequently, like fantasy fiction. Now, I enjoy a beautiful story, especially when the author is as talented as this one, but I grew up in the 1950’s and 60’s, and the history I recollect is far different from this book’s version. I clearly remember what the times were like when President Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and when Schwerner, Cheney & Goodman were murdered in Mississippi, and when Ms. Fanny Lou Hamer challenged white domination of the Mississippi Democratic Party. I was at the Democratic Convention in 1964 in Atlantic City, as a student delegate, when Ms. Hamer and her colleagues entered Convention Hall. Sue Monk Kidd’s bucolic Sylvan, South Carolina, and the little town of Tiburon, are poetic, magical places – in spite of rampant racism. One character is badly beaten, but not killed – she is actually able to walk out of the hospital within 24 hours. Another is unjustly jailed, but set free after a day or so – and not harmed? A strange white girl just moves in with a family of black women, in rural SC, and no one makes a helluva hullabaloo? And I shudder to think of a white teenage girl driving around in a car, in the front seat, with a black teenage male – in 1964 South Carolina. This would not be believable in many northern cities at the time – but it was unthinkable in the south. That poor guy would have never made it to the jailhouse alive!!

So let me stop here and say, that while I enjoyed reading this book, with its rich narrative and characters, it does read like a fairy tale. The hideous racism and violence of life in the US, north and south, is not depicted realistically in comparison to the beautiful, pastoral setting and peace of life with the Boatwright women. I do hope readers realize that much poetic licence has been taken here in terms of what this difficult period was like in US history.

It’s interesting to note, I think, that Lily’s ideal home, almost heaven, is depicted as being among black women. There used to be many white children, in the south, (and in the north), during the 1960’s and before, who received a primary source of love and care from black women, hired to work for their families. I am sure this warm, loving fantasy is not uncommon.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1,862 readers
PUBLISHER:	Viking; 1st edition (October 10, 2002)
REVIEWER:	Jana L. Perskie
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Sue Monk Kidd
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More novels to remind us of the way it was in the 1960s: The Help by Kathryn Stockett Train, Paper Boy and Paris Trout by Pete Dexter Freshwater Road by Denise Nicholas Leaving by Richard Dry

Bibliography:

• The Secret Life of Bees (2002)
• The Mermaid Chair (2005)
• The Invention of Wings (February 2014)

Nonfiction:

• God’s Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved (1987)
• When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions (1991)
• The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (1996)
• Firstlight: The Early Inspirational Writings (2007)
• Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story (2009)

Movies from books:

• The Secret Life of Bees (2008)

“She frightened me at every dawn the summer I stayed with her. She’d sit on the edge of her bed, long hair down, down to the floor and shaking as she brushed and brushed, shadows ebbing from the room and early light flowing in through both windows. Her hair was as long as her story and she couldn’t walk when her hair was not woven into dense braids and pinned around and atop her head. Otherwise her hair dragged the floor like the train of a medieval gown and she had to gather it into a sheaf and coil it about her forearm several times to walk the floor without stepping on herself. She’d been born a farm girl, then served as a maid for half a century, so she couldn’t sleep past dawn to win a bet…”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (DEC 21, 2013)

The Maid’s Version by Daniel Woodrell is a small book but reads like a tome, with such literate and beautiful imagery that I was enthralled. The book centers around the mystery of the explosion at Arbor Dance Hall in 1929. The explosion killed 42 people, many unrecognizable in death with their bodies broken up or burned beyond recognition. Alma Dunahew lost her sister Ruby in the explosion and for years has been trying to discover the answer to what happened. Those years have been hard on her with several of them spent at the Work Farm in West Table, Missouri, due to her psychic breakdown caused by rage and grief. Many of the town’s most wealthy citizens want to put the truth of the explosion to the side and no one has ever been apprehended for the crime. They look at Alma’s ramblings about the explosion as words from a crazy person. The magnitude of the explosion was enormous.

“Just as full darkness fell those happy sounds heard in the surviving house suddenly became a nightmare chorus of pleas, cries of terror, screams as the flames neared crackling and bricks returned tumbling from the heavens and stout beams crushed those souls knocked to the ground. Walls shook and shuddered for a mile around and the boom was heard faintly in the next county south and painfully by everyone in the town limits.”

One summer in 1965, Alma’s young grandson Alec comes to visit her. It is to him that she spills the story of the dance hall and her theory about what happened that night. Going back and forth in time, the novel gives the reader vignettes about those who were killed in the dance hall explosion along with the story of Ruby, Alma’s sister. Ruby was a great flirt and what was called in those days a loose woman. She would love them and leave them until she found a real love with the banker, Arthur Glencross. Glencross was married and Alma worked as a maid for the Glencross family. She worked very hard to hide Arthur’s affair from his wife Corrine by carefully washing his clothing to get out smells and stains that would serve as evidence of his affair with Ruby. After Ruby’s death, Alma hated Arthur and this was evident in her actions.

Was Arthur responsible for the explosion? Or, could it have been the preacher Isaiah Willard who spoke of death and damnation to those who danced? He believed that “the easiest portals to the soul through which demons might enter was that opened by dancing feet. Evil music, evil feet, salacious sliding and the disgusting embraces dancing excused provided an avenue of damnation that could readily be seen and blockaded” He was heard to say of the Arbor Dance Hall during that summer, “I’ll blow this place to Kingdom soon and drop those sinners into the boiling patch – see how they dance then.” What about the hobos hanging around town? Those passing through with bad intentions? Someone with a grudge against one of the dancers? Who was it? Alma thinks she knows and tells her story to Alec.

Of the forty-two killed in the explosion, only twenty-eight were whole enough so that graves could be made for them. Most of them were not identified. The rest were parts buried in a pit. Alma’s grief was such that she “touched all twenty-eight and kissed them each, kneeling to kiss the fresh black paint between her spread aching fingers, said the same words to accompany every kiss because there was no way to know which box of wood held Ruby, or if she rested in only one, had not been separated into parts by crushing or flames and interred in two or three, so she treated every box as though her sister was inside in parts or whole and cried to the last.”

Woodrell’s style of writing is unique, sounding like I’d imagine the tenor of speech spoken in the Ozarks. At times it’s a difficult book because of the writing style and the subject matter. It is, however, stunning and has left me with a deep and abiding appreciation for this author’s work. I thank him for sharing his talent and vision with readers.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 117 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company (September 3, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Daniell Woodrell
EXTRAS:	Interview  and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Outlaw Album The Bayou Trilogy

Bibliography:

• Under the Bright Lights (1986) *
• Woe to Live On (1987; 2012)
• Muscle for the Wing (1988) *
• The Ones You Do (1992) *
• Give Us a Kiss: A Country Noir (1996; 2012)
• Tomato Red (1998; 2012)
• The Death of Sweet Mister (2001; 2012)
• Winter’s Bone (2006)
• The Outlaw Album: Stories (2011)
• The Maid’s Version (September 2013)

*The Bayou Trilogy (April 2011)

Movies from Books:

• Ride with the Devil (1999) (adapted from Woe to Live On)
• Winter’s Bone (2010)

“I was locked up for a while. Full of the empty darkness, if that makes sense to you. The sort of nothing that fills up everything. Spent the whole time running down the “what if” crap to fill up my soul. What if I hadn’t dropped then? What if they’d buckled up? What if this and that? You can go crazy with that. And maybe I did. And maybe when I got out and was all of a sudden an adult and alone, yeah, maybe I did some things I shouldn’t have. And maybe those were my fault. But that’s the old me. That’s not who I am now.”

Book Review:

Review by Chuck Barksdale  (DEC 21, 2013)

First, let me say that this book has excellent writing and stories and provides a true sense of life in the rural area of Columbus County, Arkansas. I’ve decided to give this a top rating despite having some misgivings about that rating because of my occasional confusion while reading the book. However, after thinking about it especially after waiting a week or so to write this review, I’m convinced that the writing is just too good to not warrant the top rating.

The book starts out almost immediately giving the gloomy darkness that will permeate throughout the novel’s stories. The book starts with Champion Tatum and his son still trying to get over the death of Champion’s wife:

Eleanor Tatum had come home from the mill late that Saturday night last June, skipped church the next morning, and walked into the front yard to put a bullet through her temple.
“Never seen a woman do that,” Champion had overheard one of the deputies saying.
“Must have been pretty messed up, do something like that,” a tall man Champion hadn’t seen before said. “Women usually take pills. You know when they cash in.”
“Damned shame,” another deputy said, shaking his head, scratching into this notepad.
They all shook their heads and agreed it was a damned shame.

In the second section of the book, the main character , Roy Allison is introduced and it is in these sections that the book is told in the first person. As you learn, Roy is returning from spending time in juvenile detention and although he now has a job with the county he is not always welcomed when trying to do his job.

“Mr. Greer, my name’s Roy Allsion.” I pulled some papers out of my back pocket.
“I know who you are, shitface.” He raised the barrels of the shotgun to my face. “Everybody knows who you are. You’re the piece of shit who killed his parents.”
That stopped me. I guess I’ll never get used to that. Never get away from it. Which is fine. I did kill my parents.

Roy’s life became difficult after accidentally killing his parents at 16-years-old in a car accident while taking them to the hospital. He’s hoping to improve now upon his return to the area but that’s not being easy.

One of the themes that Roy and others in the book have is around life choices as in this excerpt:

You get far enough down one trail, doesn’t matter much which way you go from there – they’re all the wrong choices. Some days you just do what you learned to do, what you’ve lived your life doing. A body tumbling down a hill, into a ravine.

Roy doesn’t always make the right choices and he continues to struggle with his life as do others in the other stories of county residents. The reader can make his or her own decision about whether the choices are the right ones or if Roy and others really had a choice.

I’m a big baseball fan (in addition to being a crime fiction fan) and this book certainly has a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) baseball theme that is often present through the various stories. Characters will be watching or listening to baseball and some of the characters will know or even play baseball (look for it). You don’t have to be a baseball fan to appreciate how this is being presented but as a baseball fan you will really enjoy the baseball presence and will as a result get more out of this great book.

In the published description of this book it is described as a “A novel-in-stories in the tradition of Bonnie Jo Campbell, Donald Ray Pollock, Denis Johnson, and Alan Heathcock.” Well, unfortunately, I haven’t read any of those authors, but the book is definitely told in a series of interlocking stories. It was an approach that I enjoyed but at times found a bit confusing. Although reading and keeping notes on an electronic reader has its advantages, in this case, I would have liked being able to flip back and forth through the pages of a real book. For me though, I immediately felt I was reading a style similar to Daniel Woodrell. Again, that’s probably my ignorance in not reading more in today’s “country noir” style then in the more traditional noir style of authors such as David Goodis and Scott Phillips.

This book is the first novel published by Steve Weddle. Steve has had a few of his stories published, but I’ve known him more as a publisher and editor of the Needle books of mostly noir short stories. I actually met Steve in 2010 at Noircon in Philadelphia and after that bought a couple of the Needle books, but I’ve not talked to him since and certainly our brief meeting had no influence on anything I’ve written here. Although I’ve enjoyed the Needle books, here’s hoping Steve spends more time writing novels and hopefully I’ll get to meet him again at Noircon in 2014.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 24 readers
PUBLISHER:	Tyrus Books (November 18, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Chuck Barksdale
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Steve Weddle
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More “country noir:” The Devil All The Time by Donald Ray Pollack American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell The Bayou Trilogy by Daniel Woodrell

Bibliography:

• Country Hardball (October 2013)

“On shearing day the weather turned cool and fine. On the strength of that and nothing more, just a few degrees of temperature, the gray clouds scurried away to parts unknown like a fleet of barn cats. The chore of turning ninety ewes and their uncountable half-grown lambs through the shearing stall became a day’s good work instead of the misery expected by all. As far as Dellarobia could remember, no autumn shearing had been so pleasant.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (DEC 14, 2013)

Barbara Kingsolver is one of those rare writers with whom you know what you are getting before you open the first page.

You know, for example, that the prose is going to be literary, dense, and luscious (take this descriptive line: Summer’s heat had never really arrived, nor the cold in turn, and everything living now seemed to yearn for sun with the anguish of the unloved.”) You know that the content will focus on some kind of social justice, biodiversity, or environmental issue. You know, too, that at some point, Ms. Kingsolver will cross the line into authorial intrusion based on her passion for the subject she is writing on.

But you keep coming back for more. At least, I do. There is something mesmerizing about a Barbara Kingsolver novel, and something refreshing about a writer who combines a solid scientific background with stunning prose.

This book is entitled Flight Behavior, and for good reason. It opens with a young Appalachian woman – Dellarobia Turnbow – ready to take flight from her shotgun marriage and closed-in life with two young children. On her way up the mountain to engage in an affair, she views an astounding natural phenomenon that changes everything for her.

The core of the novel focuses on that phenomenon, centering on the migratory patterns of the bright orange Monarch butterfly, usually viewed only in Mexico. The topic is climate change and Ms. Kingsolver slashes through the obtuse definitions with language anyone can understand. Dellarobia is paired thematically with a Harvard-educated scientist Ovid Byron, whose lifework is studying the butterflies. He says, “If you woke up one morning, Dellarobia, and one of your eyes had moved to the side of your head, how would you feel about that?” That, in effect, is the same as the butterflies migrating to Appalachia.

There is much to love about this novel. Dellarobia is authentically portrayed: a woman who is confined in a life she has outgrown, complete with two very genuinely created toddlers and a best friend who is not similarly constrained. The duality of science and religion is also tackled. While Barbara Kingsolver makes no secret of how she feels about those who piously say, “Weather is the Lord’s business” while polluting our environment, she also concedes to the majesty and mystery of nature, culling in parallels from Job and Noah.

Ultimately, Ms. Kingsolver leaves us with the most important question of all: “what was the use of saving a world that had no soul left in it. Continents without butterflies, seas without coral reef…What if all human effort amounted basically to saving a place for ourselves to park?” The interconnectedness of all nature’s creatures – and our true place in our own lives and in the lives of the universe – is a message that lives on in this reader’s mind long after the last page is closed.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1,546 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (June 4, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Barbara Kingsolver
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our reviews of: The Lacuna The Bean Tree Pigs in Heaven

Bibliography:

• The Bean Trees (1988)
• Homeland and Other Stories (1989)
• Animal Dreams (1991)
• Pigs in Heaven (1993)
• The Poisonwood Bible (1998)
• Prodigal Summer (2000)
• The Lacuna (2009)
• Flight Behavior (2012)

Poetry:

• Another America: Poems (1991)

Non-fiction:

• Mine Strike (1983)
• Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (1989)
• High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now Or Never (1995)
• Small Wonder: Essays (April 2002)
• Last Stand: America’s Virgin Lands (2002)
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007)

“There was a time I answer. It was a love that any daddy would have. But that was way back. If I love Cecil now it is like the way I love the Korean conflict. Something terrible I have lived through.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (NOV 1, 2011)

Daniel Woodrell is widely known for the movie adaptation of his novel, Winter’s Bone, which won the Sundance Film Festival’s Best Picture Prize in 2010. He has just published his first book of short stories, The Outlaw Album, a collection of twelve dark and riveting stories.

Desperation – both material and psychological– motivates his characters. There is an element of moral decay and hopelessness to these stories, most taking place in the rural area of the Ozarks. I found a certain similarity in theme to the great writer, Donald Ray Pollock. Both writers attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

“The Echo of Neighborly Bones” is a haunting story of a man who murders his neighbor for killing his wife’s dog. Once his neighbor is dead, he kills him over and over again in different ways – as though his anger cannot be assuaged.

I found “Twin Forks” to be the most powerful story in the collection. It begins, “A cradle won’t hold my baby. My baby is two hundred pounds in a wheelchair and hard to push uphill but silent all the time. He can’t talk since his head got hurt, which I did to him. I broke into his head with a mattocks and he hasn’t said a thing to me nor nobody else since.” The baby is the narrator’s uncle, her mother’s brother. He is a serial rapist who the narrator catches raping a coed in the barn. The narrator, too, has been a victim of her uncle’s incestuous rapings. She beats his head in and then must care for him in his vegetative state. There comes a time when she realizes that even in a wheel chair and not talking, he remains evil.

“Florianne” is a haunting story of a man whose seventeen year-old daughter was kidnapped eleven years ago. His world is comprised of his trying to figure out who the kidnapper is. He suspects that it must be someone he knows or it could be anyone. His world is consumed by his suspicions.

In “Back Step,” Daren is at home recuperating from injuries he received in the war in the middle east. His mother is dying of cancer and Darden is plagued by memories of death and devastation that he witnessed. His big job at home is to kill a cow that has a broken leg, and then to dispose of the cow’s body by burning it.

“Night Stand” is one of the stronger stories in the collection. One night as Pelham and his wife lay asleep, a naked man appears at the foot of their bed growling. Pelham grabs a knife that happens to be on his night stand and stabs the growling man twice, killing him. He later finds out that that the man he killed is a disturbed veteran and also the son of a childhood friend. Pelham obsesses over the knife – how did it find its way to his night table?

“Two Things” is a powerful story. Cecil has been a bad egg all his life. Currently, he is in jail for thievery. He also has a history of violence. A woman who works with him in some educational or social work capacity in jail, visits Cecil’s father and shows him a book of poetry that Cecil has written. She believes that Cecil has a rare talent and wants Cecil’s father to allow Cecil to come home and live with him as part of his probation. Many of the poems are about crimes that Cecil has committed against his father. The woman believes that these rage-filled poems are amends for his wrong-doings. Cecil’s father isn’t quick to believe that Cecil has really changed and does not want Cecil living with him.

I enjoyed “Dream Spot” a lot and it still haunts me. Janet asks Dalyrimple to stop and pick up a female hitchhiker. As Dalyrimple prepares to do this, Janet begins to have delusions that this unknown woman is the love of Dalyrimple’s life. A simple act of picking up a hitchhiker leads to tragic consequences.

In “Returning the River,” a man on parole from jail burns down his neighbor’s house so that his dying father can regain his view of the river which the neighbor’s house has obscured.

The stories in this collection are raw and disturbing, leaving the reader with questions and a sense of being creeped out. They create goose bumps and a sense of uneasiness. The characters seem to have no moral center and are lost to what we think of as “normal.” Woodrell has a natural way of creating an ambiance of what it is like to be mentally ill or live outside the circle of normalcy.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 31 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (October 5, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Daniell Woodrell
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Maid’s Version The Bayou Trilogy and The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock

Bibliography:

• Under the Bright Lights (1986) *
• Woe to Live On (1987; 2012)
• Muscle for the Wing (1988) *
• The Ones You Do (1992) *
• Give Us a Kiss: A Country Noir (1996; 2012)
• Tomato Red (1998; 2012)
• The Death of Sweet Mister (2001; 2012)
• Winter’s Bone (2006)
• The Outlaw Album: Stories (2011)
• The Maid’s Version (September 2013)

*The Bayou Trilogy (April 2011)

Movies from Books:

• Ride with the Devil (1999) (adapted from Woe to Live On)
• Winter’s Bone (2010)