New Fiction by Regional Authors, March 2002 by Hal Jacobs for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Martin Pousson's debut novel,
No Place, Louisiana (Riverhead Books, $24.95), is
like a long, sad Cajun ballad played by an accordionist and fiddler
who are in no hurry to go home. Over the next 20 or so years, Nita and Louis's series of apartments and homes become dumping grounds for their anger and bitterness. Nita grows to resent being trapped as a housewife. Louis hungers for his wife's affections but settles for spotless linoleum floors and home-cooked jambalaya. With their children, Nita is impulsive and demanding. Her son is the embodiment of all her hopes until he reaches high school and develops a lisp, which she tries to have fixed at the hospital (it defies minor surgery). She begins abusing her daughter at an early age. Louis pays more attention to his nightly six-packs than his daughter's bruises. Deep down, he still believes that Nita belongs to him. Without a sense of place or family, or a connection to nature or God or anything outside themselves, Nita and Louis never grow out of their infantile needs. Only one small gesture at the end of the novel, after a family tragedy, indicates that one of them is still capable of unqualified love. Pousson, who was born and raised in Louisiana, has obviously learned one lesson well from Flannery O'Connor: His characters may be angry, embittered souls, but he writes about them with an insight that illuminates their fragility. Haley Ellyson is a 16-year-old country girl who falls in love with a Mississippi judge's son in Suzanne Kingsbury's debut novel, The Summer Fletcher Greel Loved Me (Scribner, $25). What makes this hot-and-heavy summer so unforgettable is that Haley also finds herself involved with two other men. One is a secret lover, a hard-living cowboy who happens to be her daddy's best friend. The other is a dead body of a stranger killed in her living room that she helped bury on her father's land. Against this backdrop of passion and mystery, Haley and Fletcher ("as fresh as a cut lawn in summer') begin a romance that becomes even more dangerous when they share their good times with a mutual friend and his blues-singing girlfriend. Kingsbury's novel is compelling and wonderfully descriptive. In her fictional deep-South setting of Houser Banks, Miss., air conditioning is for wimps. Real people jump in rivers, tear around in convertibles, eat fish sandwiches on Wonder bread and flirt with strangers. Kingsbury lived in Oxford, Miss., while researching and writing this novel. She now lives in Tucson, Arizona. In Frank Turner Hollon's The God File (MacAdam/Cage Publishing, $23), Gabriel Black is trapped in a maximum security Alabama penitentiary as a result of a murder he didn't commit. He doesn't blame anyone for what happened. After all, he decided to take the rap for his girlfriend after she shot her husband in cold blood. Over the next 22 years, he endures the brutality of prison live while devoting himself to his "God file" -- letters to the ex-girlfriend, stories of fellow inmates, memories of childhood and thoughts about the existence of God. By the end of his quest, he concludes his search for God by realizing that the search itself is the proof he's been looking for. Hollon lives in Baldwin County, Alabama, and practices law in Robertsdale. More new fiction by regional writers. . . Sallie Bissell, A Darker Justice (Bantam, $22.95). A second suspense thriller starring assistant district attorney Mary Crow in the North Carolina wilderness. Greg Garrett, Free Bird (Kensington Books, $23). Debut novel about a young man's road trip to self discovery. Rebecca Kavaler, A Little More than Kin (Hamilton Stone Editions, $14.95 paper). Short stories highlighting complexities of family relationships. Julia Oliver, Goodbye to the Buttermilk Sky (reprint, University of Alabama Press, $16.95 paper). Debut novel set in set in hot, lonely depression-era Central Alabama. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Blood of My Blood (University Press of Florida, $24.95). Unpublished first novel fictionalizes author's difficult relationship with mother. Deborah Smith, Stone Flower Garden (Little, Brown, $23.95). Southern Gothic novel with all the bells, whistles and pounding hearts.
An edited version of these reviews appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sunday, March 17, 2002 |
