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

James Whorton, Jr.'s Approximately Heaven (Free Press, $23, July 2003) views the world through the eyes of a young, unemployed electrician from Tennessee. Don (Wendall to his friends) Brush is basically on a slow train to Loserville. His house is a shambles. So is his professional life, which consists of "cootering about" from job to job. His steady beer drinking has put a dull finish on a mind that, while competent, was never razor sharp.

But when his wife, Mary, announces her plans to end their seven-year marriage, Don leaps into action-and lands the wrong way. First he goes on a Natural Light beer binge with his trash-talking circle of friends. Quite naturally, this leads to a road trip through Mississippi and Alabama with a dangerous old codger named Dove, who has more than a few tricks up his polyester sleeve.

These two working-class stiffs make quite a hilarious odd couple. Dove may be teetering on his last legs, but he seems to be plotting some final act of meanness towards his super-sized son-in-law, a used car salesman in Hattiesburg.

On the other hand, Don is a modern-day version of the good knight of yore. His despair at losing the virtuous Mary causes him to wander the byways of the kingdom-the land of smelly motel rooms, Dollar Generals and minimum-wage misery. Although his heart is breaking, Don never loses sight of others' suffering--even that of a possum dropped outside his motel room by a dog that Don, moments earlier, allowed into a restaurant's trash area.

I thought, How depressing, to be an ugly, dirty little beast with a life of running up and down the roads all night, trying to do things for yourself and hiding I don't know where in the daytime, and then one night you're sorting through some trash in apparent safety and this shirtless joker lets in a dog that wants to crack your spine for the hell of it, and you're dead.

Approximately Heaven might be depressing stuff if it wasn't such a wildly funny and inventive portrayal of a particular man's sudden head-on with despair. By his basic nature, Don isn't tooled for critical thinking--he was built for cruising through life with one hand on the wheel. But Whorton shows in his debut novel, with deadpan perfection, how this simple man can be broken down over the course of many days and six-packs, then receive a second chance at life, just like a certain possum.

Whorton, a prize-winning short fiction writer, teaches English at Northeast State Technical Community College in Blountville, Tenn.

***

At first glance, Marjorie Kemper's Until That Good Day (Thomas Dunne Books, $24.95, July 2003) seems like yet another coming-of-age novel told through the eyes of yet another precocious young girl trying to sort out various family secrets and the comings-and-goings of her dashing, yet inattentive father.

Fortunately, Kemper's debut novel goes beyond the old formula and compliments her story with a variety of interesting points of view that capture life in the Louisiana delta of the late 1920s and early '30s.

John Washington is far more successful as a traveling salesman than as a father to his two young daughters. He feels most at home in his red Essex, blasting down two-lanes to visit country stores and dropping by a certain settlement of black sharecroppers where his mistress awaits. With Odessa he can relax and be himself. That is, he can be a man who doesn't have to worry about passing as white in a segregated society.

To keep up this façade, he marries the whitest woman he can find after the death of his first wife. Antoinette is a tiny sparrow of a woman from a large, noisy Irish family. She's also a petty tyrant with an evil eye for her stepdaughters and black employees.

Eventually, the forces that gather around this troubled family collide like a perfect thunderstorm, bringing human tragedy, as well as an unexpected twist that restores a sense of balance.

Kemper's debut novel is based loosely on the author's own family history. Her short fiction has been published by "The Atlantic Monthly", and she lives in Glendale, California.

***

Even if parts of Sharyn McCrumb's Ghost Riders (Dutton, $24.95, July 2003) seem like out-takes from her last bestselling novel (The Songcatcher), they still make for interesting historical fiction, with a dose of ghostly special effects on the side.

Once again, she weaves the past and present together in her quilt-like depiction of the Appalachians. The best running story of the bunch features the real-life account of a married couple who did everything together, even enlisting in the same Confederate unit. When Keith Blalock joins the Confederate Army, it's not out of love for the rebel cause, but because his neighbors will hang him if he refuses. Much to his surprise, he's joined in camp a few days later by his younger brother, who is actually his wife, Malinda, in rebel drag. The ruse works for a while. At least long enough for Keith to trick an army doctor into discharging him, and for Malinda to convince an officer of her true gender.

Other running stories aren't quite as gripping. One deals with those pesky Civil War re-enactors, out-of-towners who drive up in their SUVs, then spend the weekend feigning privation and starvation (the best re-enactors are the vegetarian joggers from local colleges). Unfortunately, they are also causing the ghosts of Confederate dead to rise up and ride again, which could have disastrous consequences for the resale value of local vacation homes.

McCrumb is a native North Carolinian who lives and writes in the Virginia Blue Ridge.

An edited version of these reviews appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sunday, July 27, 2003.

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