Reading the South
New Fiction by Regional Authors, January 2003
by Hal Jacobs
for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The heyday of coal mining casts a deep shadow over the West Virginia countryside in William Hoffman's Wild Thorn (HarperCollins, $24.95). During the boom years, when coal was plentiful, the mine owners lived like kings above ground while their workers tunneled like moles below. Two generations later, the towns are drying up, the former estates are giving way to "briars and bobcats," and the people left behind are trapped, like insects in amber, in the residue of that bygone era.

Charley LeBlanc, the story's narrator, has tried to escape his past as a descendent of mine owners. In the wilds of western Montana, he's carved out an old-fashioned existence with a tough, petite woman named Blackie, a fellow survivor. But he can't escape the dreams that haunt him at night. Or his responsibility to a woman known as Esmeralda, who still hides out in the West Virginia mountains, sleeps in abandoned caves, and avoids contact with all humans except for a kindly old mountain woman.

In this crime novel-meets-Southern gothic, Charley and Blackie return home only to learn that the old woman has been murdered. Police suspect the wild Esmeralda and, to Charley's horror, manage to catch her and strap her down to a bed in a state hospital. The only one who gives a damn about proving her innocence is Charley, though he doesn't tell anyone, even Blackie, that the wild woman is actually his birth mother.

As he digs deeper into the mystery, Charley catches no breaks from the local authorities. But he soon makes the acquaintance of a newly arrived millionaire with old coal-mining money and a much younger, ambitious wife who want to give the abandoned countryside a makeover as a ski resort.

Charley is a most unconventional criminal investigator, and "Wild Thorn" is a lyrical yet hard-boiled, genre-bending crime novel that captures the nuances of West Virginia's peculiar beauty and its small-town eccentrics.

This is the 13th novel for William Hoffman, who lives in Virginia.

***

Robert Ashcom's Winter Run (Algonquin Books, $19.95) looks back at the charmed life of a boy growing up on a Virginia farm in the late 1940s and early '50s.

Charlie Lewis' best friends are his imagination and a middle-aged black farm worker, Matthew Tanner, who teaches the boy everything he knows about animals, woods and fields. Others in the small farming community consider the boy a nuisance, but Matthew is devoted to the pale, blond child. He knows exactly what thoughts are going through Charlie's mind as they stand back and watch a fox elude hounds by running into a muddy, overgrown hog pen:

"I had to get into that place and see how with all that hell going on, with the hounds roaring around, the hogs squealing and running, and mud and slop everywhere, that fox had got out of there in one piece. How? I would find out."

As the seasons of his boyhood unfold, Charlie begins to lose his innocence and to come to grips with the cycle of life and death. When a one-eyed brown mule dies from old age, a mule that once followed the boy around like a dog, Charlie can't stand the thought of dragging the mule over the hill to the bone yard. So he walks to town and persuades a backhoe operator (who needs the advertising) to drive out to the farm and give the mule a proper burial. Matthew arrives in time to stop the foolishness, but doesn't. He sees the burial in a broader context, as a ceremony to honor the last in a long line of mules.

As Charlie gets older, he turns his attention toward the excitement of the hunt and working with dogs. The imagination of childhood has given away to a greater understanding of the natural world, but also a self-consciousness that no longer allows him to have a close relationship with his childhood mentor.

Robert Ashcom is the author of "Lost Hound," a nonfiction collection. He lives on a farm near Warrenton, Va.

***

Sallie Bingham's Transgressions (Sarabande Books, $13.95 paperback) is a collection of short stories that portray the intimate moments in the lives of older women and men who are still exploring new relationships and truths about themselves. Many of her characters have made clean breaks from their past lives as wives, mothers or urbanites. Mostly they live in Southwestern towns like Santa Fe, where their existence is less cluttered but subject to sudden revelations.

In "Apricots," a 63-year-old English professor asks one of her male students to join her in an afternoon of apricot canning at home. During their afternoon together, he cites her failure in the classroom -- she seemed disappointed in her class and never bothered to learn her students' names. Minutes later, he offers forgiveness in the shape of a peeled apricot:

Without its fuzzy skin, the apricot looked small and vulnerable, like a naked part of a person that would ordinarily be hidden. Caroline slipped it into her mouth and brought her teeth down lightly; the soft meaty flesh of the apricot fell away onto her tongue. It was deliciously sweet, and hot.

In "The Hunt," a woman feels betrayed by her longtime lover when he falls too heavily under the spell of her wealthy brother. In "The Pump," as a well digger finishes restoring water to her home, a woman ponders why her last relationship survived only two weeks:

I am standing in the shower, my first shower in two days, standing absolutely still under the gracious, streaming water -- a woman still young in an old woman's body, a woman crying.

Sallie Bingham is the founder of the Kentucky Foundation for Women. The author of several books of fiction, she also wrote "Passion and Prejudice," a memoir of her powerful publishing family.

***

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

Marian Coe's Key to a Cottage (SouthLore, $19.95). A small-town Alabama girl goes from single mom in the 1960s to high-powered sales professional in south Florida during the 1990s. Meanwhile, the woman's aunt in Alabama keeps her grounded in a way that most south Florida professional women from south Florida aren't.

Opening lines: From wherever you are, Vyola, can you see me tonight, standing here on a South Florida balcony? I need to talk, to feel you listening. As aunt to the kid I was, friend to the woman I became, you helped me through many a quandary by your patient listening. Never told me what to do, did you, but reminded me that choices were the way to move past stone walls.

***

Kiki DeLancey's Coal Miner's Holiday (Sarabande Books, $13.95 paperback). This collection of short stories deals with the culture and characters of coal-mining towns bordering the Ohio River. A bluesy country-western current runs through most of the stories, especially one about a young man who claims to be singer George Jones.

Opening lines: When Matthew Friar first saw his Tammy, she was looking across the empty seat and through the window of her 1984 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. She'd pulled beside them on the steepest arch of the mountain road, a hundred yards past the bar.

***

Backcountry (Vandalia Press). These stories and poems showcase contemporary writing in West Virginia. As editor Irene McKinney says: "The writing that has recently emerged from West Virginia rises up out of these dense forests, coal mines, small towns, wet roads, mountain music, and the High Lonesome voice of it, the deep privacy of the layered and textured forests, vegetation, and surrounding animal life."

***

Nea Anna Simone's Reaching Back (BET Books, $15). Skin color separates an espresso-complexioned woman from her light-skinned husband, but she finds the strength to break away in the example set by courageous women in her family.

Opening lines: As she stood at the end and the beginning of her life, Mignon gazed out from the balcony onto the terrace at the beautifully landscaped gardens. Turning her attention to Miss Thompson, the nanny, she absorbed the tranquility. Then she lovingly monitored the children while their swim instructor gave them their swimming lessons.

***

Andrea Smith's Friday Nights at Honeybee's (Dial Press, $22.95). Two women struggle to make their voices heard in the early 1960s: one from the Brooklyn projects, the other from the rural South. If they're successful, they'll make it to "The Big House," a Harlem jam session that attracts the mightiest jazz and blues musicians.

Opening lines: A bit of moonlight shone through the half-opened blinds. But for the soft sound of Bobby Timmons' 'Moanin' ' coming from the living room, the apartment was hushed. Forestine stood in the doorway and let her eyes adjust to the darkness. She could hardly see the figure draped across the bed.

An edited version of these reviews appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2003.

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