New Fiction by Regional Authors, April 2002 by Hal Jacobs for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mary Ward Brown's second collection of short stories, It Wasn't All Dancing (University of Alabama Press, $24.95), looks closely at small moments in the lives of Southerners to reveal great truths about the role that race, class and religion play in the region. The title story depicts the final days in the life of a former Alabama belle. Rose Merriweather shares her remaining lucid moments with a young black nurse, Etta Mae Jones. Despite their obvious differences, the two women recognize each other's strength, grace and intelligence. When Rose admits that she was too busy socializing to be a good mother to her only daughter, Etta Mae offers solid reassurance.
In "Once in a Lifetime," a middle-aged waitress is courted by the town's most available bachelor. When her teenaged daughter becomes pregnant, however, Edythe decides to call the whole thing off.
In "A New Life," a widow in her late 40s attracts the attention of a former beau who wants to bring her into the fold of a new religious group in town called Keepers of the Vineyard ("Like a rock band, someone said.") After going along mostly out of politeness, Elizabeth finally snaps and asks to be left alone. Then she has a long cry, something she's desperately needed all along after the death of her husband. Brown is a gifted storyteller who sees the headline-sized issues and ironies of the region but is more interested in capturing the warmth of its small, heroic, personal struggles. She lives in her family home in Marion, Ala. In Stephen Marion's Hollow Ground (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, $23.95), a small town in Tennessee is slowly disappearing into the zinc mines that burrow beneath it. Perhaps this feeling of collapse explains why the people of Alexander City are succumbing to madness, suicide, and despair. Taft Defaro, 13, has become a victim of this place. People appear and disappear in his adolescent world without much explanation. His grandfather is more in touch with the town's departed spirits than its living ones; his uncle is the town outlaw, but is tolerated because he works the most dangerous job in the zinc mines. Taft's father suddenly strolls back into town after disappearing into the jungles of Vietnam before his son's birth. Taft is mostly left alone to muddle through, but his exposure to the irrational world of adults and his classmates (his girlfriend asks him to kill her mother, which leads to bizarre results) has turned him into a skeptic. He doesn't believe in anything except nature. That explains his glimmer of happiness after seeing a huge snapping turtle that his uncle keeps chained in the creek.
Marion lives in Tennessee, where he works as a reporter and photographer. In "Hollow Ground," he creates a dark, sensual world that never fully reveals its compelling mystery. Sheri Joseph's Bear Me Safely Over (Atlantic Monthly Press, $23) unfolds in the rural countryside between Atlanta and Athens. Sidra and Curtis, unambitious college grads in their mid-20s, are planning to get married, but there are still a few questions to settle. Their biggest challenge is Curtis's stepbrother, Paul, a gay teenager who is beginning to drift towards a life on the streets of Atlanta. While Curtis can hardly control his homophobic rage, Sidra grows increasingly protective, even letting Paul move into her farm house with her mother. Growing up around horses, she knows that he needs special handling. "He reminds me of an Arabian colt, hot-blooded and skittish and a little too smart for the barn." In her debut novel, Joseph weaves a tale of families and friends who are struggling to accept each other's choices. With great sensitivity, she explores the feelings of a young gay male who decides to tell the truth no matter how much pain it brings himself and others. Joseph attended the University of Georgia and will soon start
teaching at Georgia State University. An edited version of these reviews appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sunday, April 21, 2002 |
