New Fiction by Regional Authors, January 2002 by Hal Jacobs for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You don't have to be a romantic to fall under the spell of Augusta Trobaugh's Sophie and the Rising Sun (Dutton, $22.95), but it helps. It is 1942, and a quiet, Japanese gardener in Salty Creek, Ga., has become infatuated with Miss Sophie, the local spinster. As he kneels and weeds the front walkway, Mr. Oto watches her stroll by several times a week, oblivious to his existence.
Eventually his patience is rewarded. But just when it appears that he and the woman of his dreams might stroll into the sunset together, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Suddenly, Mr. Oto is no longer safe, and Sophie has to make a choice that will affect the rest of their lives. Trobaugh, the author of two previous novels, anoints her small Southern town with a hint of Japanese folktale that creates an elegant balance of light, shadows and poignancy. Mr. Oto and Miss Sophie have the timeliness of characters cast in bronze, holding hands, their eyes fixed on a distant point over the salt marsh. The Storyville neighborhood of New Orleans, one of the most outrageous red-light districts in U.S. history, wasn't for the pure of heart. And neither is David Fulmer's debut mystery novel, Chasing the Devil's Tail (Poisoned Pen Press, $24.95). When "sporting girls" start turning up dead in Storyville, a black rose adorning each corpse, it falls to Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr to find the killer. Unfortunately, the number one suspect is his childhood friend King Bolden. The cornet player (one of many real-life characters in the novel) has become notorious for his rants, "rushing up and down the stage like he was about to run right out of his mind, tearing jagged holes in the night, loud enough and rough enough, some swore, to rattle the bones of the most recently-deceased in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2." Everyone believes Bolden is behind the murders - everyone except for St. Cyr. Fulmer, an Atlanta writer and producer, captures Storyville in all of its creative, mystical and sordid excess. His Valentin St. Cyr never gets moralistic or misty-eyed over his world of madams, pimps and addicts, including his girlfriend, ("a coffee-colored dove"). Late at night, after he unbuckles the stiletto from his ankle sheath, takes the whalebone sap from his back pocket and slips the pistol from his jacket pocket to beneath his pillow, he sleeps with a clear conscience. Marshall Terry's Angels Prostate Fall (Southern Methodist University Press, $19.95) examines a few weeks in the life of Stanley Morris, an unassuming English professor at a small southern university. Like other men of his generation, Morris is facing the dreaded scourge of prostate cancer. As his days and nights become more fragmented by hospital visits, surgery and medication, his mind wanders freely with the spirits of loved ones, both living and departed. Morris is a generous spirit who never succumbs to pathos or self-pity, and recovers sufficiently enough to find himself flattered back into committee work by the charming new dean. Terry, a former department chair and associate provost at Southern Methodist University, is the author of seven works of fiction. One of the big mysteries in John S. Tarlton's The Cost of Doing Business (Bridge Works Publishing, $22.95) is how 33-year-old Diane Morris, a former LSU basketball star who stands 6'4", is ever going to find a good man who can look her straight in the eye. Her ex-husband is neither good or tall, and now she's raising their 12-year-old son with the help of her father. This professional woman's days are dominated by her job in a male-dominated business - she negotiates oil-drilling rights for a major oil company. She's experienced and hard-as-nails, but still uses her heart to resolve a land dispute involving three feisty property owners in a rural Louisiana setting that simmers with corruption and past injustices. Tarlton is the author of one previous novel, "A Window Facing West." In case you missed Julia Oliver's Goodbye to the Buttermilk Sky the first and second time around (1994 and 1995), the University of Alabama Press offers it one more time (A Deep South Book, $16.95 paper). Set in depression-era Central Alabama, Oliver's debut novel begins with a young farm wife fetching a pail of water for a Birmingham businessman whose automobile has overheated on the highway. When the married man returns the bucket, the two lonely souls begin an affair that also overheats, then explodes. The story has a tabloid-style feel and ending, but Oliver's writing adds a lyrical sensibility that makes the novel a first-class read. An edited version of these reviews appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sunday, Jan. 13, 2002 |
