Reading the South
New Fiction by Regional Authors, June 2006
by Hal Jacobs
for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Three new novels from Southern writers -- two first-time authors and a sophomore who defies the second-time-out jinx -- show some exciting range and verve. Keep an eye out for these promising writers.

* * *

Every now and then a novel comes along to remind us that Africa is more than a country in the throes of poverty, disease and violence. Tony D'Souza's Whiteman (Harcourt, $22) illuminates moments of awe and beauty, laughter and sensuality, against the backdrop of a country sitting atop a powder keg.

In this truly impressive debut novel, the main character is a 20-something American relief worker known to his fellow villagers as Whiteman, or Adama (aka Jack Diaz from Chicago). Imagine Hawkeye Pierce from "M*A*S*H" transported 50 years into the future, eschewing military service for volunteer work, living in a small Muslim village in West Africa, and you get the idea. With no funds or resources (after Sept. 11th) to bring clean water to the village, he soon realizes that his biggest contribution is to just fit in, that is, live and learn.

Life is pared down to its basic elements- food, work, sex and the complications of sex. Before moving to his current home in Florida, D'Souza spent two years in the Ivory Coast as a Peace Corp volunteer, so he knows this territory well. And he also knows something about storytelling-his writing is as meticulously detailed and crafted as an old folktale that is smoothed out with each retelling.

Some of the best chapters deal with Adama's dalliances with young women in the countryside, especially his love affair with a young prostitute from the city.

Always, there were weeks and months in the grueling Iron Age with nothing but the stars at night and the village's suffocating customs for company. Always at the end of them was a girl with long limbs who smelled like soap and sweat. My dreams away from her were haunted by her shape. She'd taken her place in the pantheon of women who were important to me.

Is it a problem that the chapters feel more like a collection of short stories-that the novel's arc seems almost secondary? Not really. Most readers will find themselves reading the last lines of the novel and exhaling deeply with satisfaction. Will some readers turn away because of the subject matter - another novel in a long line about whites "discovering" the "forgotten continent"? No doubt.

But this is the kind of book you want to push into the hands of others. Especially young men and women who might want to spend a few years abroad in the Peace Corps. Or those who have been there, done that. It's a book about honor and humility--about the value of immersing oneself in a different culture and discovering what it means to be fully alive.

* * *

If one lined up all the novels about southern women coping poorly with mothers, daughters, aunts or grandmothers (menfolk have been largely missing or quiet since the War Between the States), the books might easily fill an interstate between Atlanta and Mobile ("The Drama Queen Highway"?). These novels do not just provide good entertainment, they also provide great therapy at a great price (usually less than $10 an hour).

Joshilyn Jackson's Between, Georgia (Warner Books, $22.95) provides solid entertainment and therapeutic value as a follow-up to her first novel (gods in Alabama).

Halfway between Athens and Atlanta lies the small town of Between, where the Fretts and Crabtrees have looked cross-eyed at each other since the Fretts settled upwind of the Crabtrees. Straddling the two families is Nonny Frett, a young woman with wild Crabtree blood thanks to her birth mother, but who was adopted and raised by the Frett sisters to know right from wrong (or, proper from tacky).

The Fretts were meticulous, order incarnate. The Crabtrees lived in unimaginable squalor. The Fretts lived within convention and tradition, while the Crabtrees spread like kudzu, generating chaos and more Crabtrees, generally without benefit of marriage. The Fretts had both money and the respect of the town. They were the royal fish in this tiniest of ponds, and the Crabtrees fed along the bottom.

Jackson, who lives outside of Atlanta, makes her story interesting by adding lots of seasoning to her mix and extra pepper to the gravy. For instance, Nonny's mother is a deaf-mute artist. The two women communicate by signing in the palm of the other's hand, so their relationship is quite touching in more ways than one. Nonny's natural grandmother is a coarse, hot-tempered Crabtree woman with a brood of violent sons at her beck and call. But she also loves Nonny with a primal fierceness that's just as touching.

When the two families seem poised on the edge of spilling blood, Nonny returns home to broker a peace deal. Soon she finds herself more entangled than ever, even to the point of getting involved with a local independent bookstore owner who happens to be a Crabtree (perhaps a pointed comment on what kind of person would own a bookstore these days?). Needless to says, it's a slam battle-ground royale as the women face off to settle once and for all who will be declared the smackdown drama queen of Between.

* * *

Darnell Arnoult's Sufficient Grace (Free Press, $23) poses the following question: what kind of ripple effect would occur after a middle-aged woman starts drawing images of Jesus on the walls of her North Carolina ranch house and disappears without a trace (at least for a while) from her husband after nearly 30 years of marriage?

For starters, her husband, Ed, must re-think everything he once took for granted.

He should have seen it coming. People say men have midlife crises, but it's the women. No wonder they call it 'the change.' He hears stories like this at the Moose all the time. Women leave their husbands for no reason, with no warning, when they hit the hot flashes and the night sweats. At poker a few weeks ago, one of the guys was talking about his sister-in-law running off with a parking lot attendant. Now it's Ed's turn to be left.

Once his wife, Gracie, turns up in a small African-American cemetery in Virginia, she is nursed back to health by several black women who regard her as something of a gift from God.

As we discover in this engaging debut novel, it's no coincidence that Gracie turned up where she did. Her caretakers Tootie and Mattie know something about compassion and care that is probably just as valuable as the psychiatric care that she receives later, and which the novel gets somewhat bogged down in.

Arnoult, a Tennessee resident who has written a collection of poems, has the lyrical gifts to portray a range of interesting, offbeat characters who you find yourself rooting for as they struggle to stay in the present while letting the past take care of itself.

An edited version of these reviews appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Tuesday, June 20, 2006.

| top |