Reading the South
New Fiction by Regional Authors, January 2004
by Hal Jacobs
for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Reading T.R. Pearson's latest novel is like riding one of those wild, whirly carnival rides that flings you in so many directions simultaneously that you're not sure which will fall apart first, you or the machine.

True Cross (Viking, $24.95) is outrageously funny - in its own dark, leering, crazy way. The narrator, Paul Tatum, is a down-at-heel bookkeeper who spends his days filing tax returns for a sex-addicted dairy farmer, visiting a vermin-infested remnant shop run by dotty twins, and marveling at a local hair academy that offers a featured cut of the day at "powerfully seductive" prices that the locals, descended mostly from Scottish clans, can't seem to resist.

His life is basically one long, entertaining tangent after another. Paul is a hopeless romantic, whether it's rescuing a stray dog from a Manhattan street (and driving back a few months later to ditch it) or touring Venice with a local woman who seems blind to their "general unsuitability for each other."

The only real connection he enjoys is with the ornery neighbor across the highway, a medieval knight wannabe, who shares with Paul a compulsion to come to the aid of a particular damsel in distress -- the tall, willowy wife of a wealthy businessman. Of course, no good deed goes unpunished, and for one of them, the punishment is fatal.

Pearson, who lives in Virginia, is the author of eight novels, including the most recent, "Polar."

***

Mary Contrary is a most unlikely homicide investigator in River Jordan's novel The Gin Girl (Livingston Press, University of West Alabama, $14.95 paperback). She's every bit as jaded and hardboiled as a big-city sleuth, but she's a 20-something Native American who wants only to solve the murder of a close friend.

Three years after the killing, Mary has returned home to Toliquilah Island, a rundown fishing village in Florida. Times have changed. Her friend's diner is now in the hands of Edna, a large, scowling, one-armed woman from Georgia who hates jukebox music. At first, Edna and Mary waste few words on each other, but gradually they learn to co-exist.

As Mary starts to put together the pieces of the crime, she realizes that she may be the key piece. She's the "gin girl," according to an old blind woman who lives on the island and milks venomous snakes for a living. And the gin girl sets things right by leading the gingerbread man into a trap, or gin.

This debut novel has a leisurely pace and moody, offbeat rhythm that suits its characters and salt-marsh setting perfectly. It also builds towards a surprisingly effective twist at the end.

Jordan divides her time nowadays between Nashville and her hometown of Panama City.

***

Suzanne Hudson's debut novel, In a Temple of Trees, (MacAdam Cage, $23) begins on an extremely graphic note. The year is 1958, and five business leaders from a small Alabama town are enjoying a private evening in a remote hunting cabin with a young, enthusiastic woman from the nearby box factory. Unbeknownst to them, a young African-American boy is watching every moment of their lurid night, which ends in the woman's murder.

More than 30 years later, Cecil Durgin still lives with the private shame of that night -- and the secret of the woman's disappearance. And that's just one of the many violent and depraved scenes he has witnessed (which Hudson lovingly details in flashbacks).

Fortunately, this legacy of the old racist south has also been accompanied by many acts of love and friendship, thanks to Cecil's adopted mother, who is white, and his childhood friends.

Recent events may prove Cecil's undoing. His power in the community as a local radio station owner and preacher has angered a group of white businessmen. To quiet him, they unleash two twisted, sociopathic brothers who, more than anything, seem to be on parole from a Carl Hiaasen novel.

Hudson, a Georgia native, lives in Baldwin County, Ala. Her short story collection "Opposable Thumbs" was published in 2001.

***

Scott Ely's collection of short stories Pulpwood (Livingston Press, University of West Alabama, $14.95 paperback) depicts the intimate world of male relationships, mostly in the Deep South.

Men rarely talk about matters of the heart in these stories, so their actions speak louder than words.

A welder in "The Bed" becomes romantically involved with a plastic surgeon who is attracted to him for several reasons that may have nothing to do with who he is.

In the title story, a young man abruptly breaks up with his fiancee, sells everything he owns, then returns home to confront the truth of his father's long-ago suicide. In In "A View of the Lillies," a sheriff's deputy turns the bloodhounds loose to track down his cheating wife. After the dogs' successful search, he ends up talking quietly with the dogs -- the wife left far behind.

Ely, a native of Atlanta, teaches fiction writing at Winthrop University in South Carolina.

An edited version of these reviews appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2004.

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