Reading the South
New Fiction by Regional Authors, November 2002
by Hal Jacobs
for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Elyse Singleton's This Side of the Sky (BlueHen Books, $24.95) follows the lives of two inseparable friends who share the misfortune of growing up black and female in rural Mississippi of the 1930s.

Lilian is the smart one. She slips in the back door of the whites-only library during weekdays when no one else is visiting. She's the dreamer who loves "anything with wheels or wings -- including Pontiacs, trains, bread trucks and hummingbirds -- because they all had the power to get out of Mississippi."

Myraleen is the pretty one, "a girl so high-toned she made the sun look dim." Where Lilian has dreams, she has suspicions--and a tongue that was razor-sharp even before the age of 13 when her mother arranges her marriage to a 30-year- old house painter. Of course, Myraleen wastes no time in convincing him she's an unsuitable child-bride. She sets him on fire during their wedding night, then falls asleep in the outhouse.

As they grow into young women (and 20-something house maids), the friends remain true to each other. Lilian understands they don't have a future in Mississippi, but she's unwilling to leave behind her friend.

Except for rationing coupons and news reels, the world war barely registers on their radar screen. That is, until the day they visit a local farm and meet Kellner, a German POW on work detail.

While Myraleen believes the Nazi is duty-bound to slit their throats, Lilian finds an intelligence and passion that she's never seen outside the world of novels.

She also awakens feelings in Kellner, who was educated at Oxford and studied psychiatry in Berlin. Like her, he's an imprisoned soul who cares nothing for politics or skin color.

When Lilian falls into a deep depression after losing contact with Kellner and is disqualified for a teaching education because of her age, Myraleen finally agrees to leave Mississippi.

In Philadelphia, the women find a world that still judges them by their skin color. For a time, Myraleen passes as white and works as a sales clerk. Lilian's dark complexion qualifies her for a job in a meat packing plant. Yet they also discover opportunities (Lilian learns that there are actually black writers) and a chance to grow as humans.

Soon, they find themselves caught up by world events. Myraleen's heart is unthawed by a fighter pilot from Tuskegee. Later she and Lilian join the WACs and ship out to England for life abroad. In the meantime, Kellner returns to his family in Dresden as part of a prisoner exchange. While he struggles through the bombing of Dresden and starvation in a Russian prison camp, he never gives up thinking about the woman who made him feel alive in Mississippi.

Singleton's debut novel shows her ability to capture the essence of both large historical events and small dramatic moments. Her characters are fully rounded, sometimes charming and entertaining, sometimes quite poignant and moving. For instance, after three weeks of tutoring Lilian in math, Kellner suddenly realizes the truth about this young black woman. "You are very smart," he says.

His voice relayed a sadness that mystified me. Do dumb people make you happy? I said to myself. But on the way home I realized something. He felt sorry for me because I was smart but buried in this place where it made no difference. Next time I would manage to mention that I did have plans to leave Nadir?twenty- year-old plans, but he didn't have to know that. Or maybe he thought I was buried inside my dark skin, and that would be my lifetime tomb.

Singleton is an award-winning freelance journalist whose work has appeared in publications such as The Miami Herald and USA Today.

* * *

In Kevin Hazzard's Sleeping Dogs (Mercer University Press, $20), a young man from Maine breaks away from the confines of family and a steady office job to head South for adventure.

Not long after Will Lightfoot steps off the Greyhound bus in Charleston, he falls in with a group of partying Southerners led by Harry, a charismatic, Yankee-in-exile, aspiring writer. By day, Will works as a tour guide who leads jetski expeditions to the nearby salt marshes and sandy beaches. By night, he and Harry and friends engage in endless drinking, smoking, flirting and talking in Charleston's bars and restaurants. Life is messy and uncertain -- it also resembles a Hemingway novel -- which suits Will fine.

Days were a blur and so were nights, but you never forget the feeling of showering with a warm buzz after spending a drunken afternoon with friends on the beach and flirting with girls.

After winding up the summer in Charleston, Will and Harry take their show on the road to Atlanta. They move in with Will's sister, a young woman who lives in East Atlanta and whose eyes bear witness to her struggles with words, men and addiction. As winter approaches, as the pressures grow, Will and his circle of friends make small choices that will have a deep ripple effect for the rest of their lives.

In his debut novel, Hazzard shifts between writing a travelogue about people and places in the South and writing a part memoir about a young man's search for meaning. What he finds isn't all that new, but he captures the spirit of wandering, alienation and courage at a difficult stage in life.

Hazzard is a graduate of the Citadel and lives in Atlanta.

* * *

Also check out these new novels by regional writers. . .

Dark End of the Street, by Ace Atkins (William Morrow, $23.95). Former Auburn University football star and Tampa Tribune crime reporter combines the history of blues and the going-ons of the Dixie Mafia to turn out this investigative mystery starring Nick Travers, blues historian and gumshoe.

Mariah of the Spirits and Other Southern Ghost Stories, by Sherry Austin (The Overmountain Press, $24.95). These well-told stories have both literary and creepy appeal as ghosts slink all over the South's gothic landscape, from the Appalachian Mountains to intown Atlanta to a New Orleans curiosity shop.

Welcome to Higby, by Mark Dunn (MacAdam/Cage, $25). The author of Ella Minnow Pea writes about the high jinks of a small southern town in northern Mississippi over Labor Day weekend. The narrative changes directions more often than a Robert Altman film.

Swan Place, by Augusta Trobaugh ( Dutton, $22.95). The author of Sophie and the Rising Sun writes an old-fashioned tale about a 14-year-old girl who is forced into the responsibilities of adulthood after her mother dies, leaving her and her siblings with their 17-year-old stepmother.

| top |

An edited version of these reviews appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2002.