A LAND MORE KIND THAN HOME by Wiley Cash

Here's another novel about Southerners behaving badly.  Yes, I know, this is about a rural community, and obviously this kind of thing really happens, but the Pentecostals are even starting to give up speaking in tongues.  This book is set 30 years ago, I think, but still….  We have 3 first-person narrators (very Faulkneresque):  Jess (a 9-year-old boy that, once again, I initially thought was a girl), Adelaide (an elderly woman), and Clem (the sheriff).  Just the fact that the sheriff is one of the narrators does not portend well for this community.  The villain is Carson Chambliss, pastor of a small church where snake-handling is the norm.  One elderly woman has already died due to this practice, but the so-called Christian parishioners dumped her body in her backyard so that there would be no suspicions surrounding the church.  Adelaide now keeps all the children at her house during the services to protect them from the caged rattlers.  Jess peeks in a church window one Sunday and observes church members trying to cure his older brother Stump of muteness by laying on hands, which is not as gentle a process as one might think.  All in all, Chambliss is one of the scariest religious fanatics ever, and he's having an affair with Jess's mother.  There must be some charisma there, but that didn't come across to me.  In fact, I like for my characters to be a little more nuanced, but he is bad to the bone.  When Jess inadvertently causes the zealots to believe that a miracle has occurred, the consequences are dire.  Jess's paternal grandfather, whom the sheriff blames for his son's death, reenters the picture as a somewhat reformed man.  This book did not teach me anything, nor did it move me or entertain me all that much, but it inspired a pretty lively book club discussion.

RHETT BUTLER'S PEOPLE by Donald McCaig

Frankly, my dear, this book was not what I expected.  The title led me to believe it was a prequel, but actually it's a retelling (and continuation) of Gone With the Wind from another perspective, though not always Rhett's.  If you're a huge GWTW fan, then you will probably either love or hate this novel.  If you love all things associated with GWTW, then this novel will give you more to love.  If you're more of a GWTW snob and think GWTW is the greatest love story ever written, then you'll probably think this novel pales in comparison.  As for me, I liked it but didn't love it, and I could say the same about the original, which, honestly I don't remember all that well.  I did look forward to the scene where Scarlett visits Rhett in jail in her green velvet dress that she fashioned from Tara's drapes, but knowing almost everything that was going to happen detracted from my enjoyment quite a bit.  This author knows his Civil War history, and that aspect may have been better fleshed out here, but I'm really more interested in why Scarlett swooned over the very boring Ashley Wilkes.  Her relationship with Rhett is tricky and is definitely of the love-hate variety.  For some reason, their clawing at each other here reminded me of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, with all the jealousy but not the drinking.  As expected, this book is more politically correct than the original, thank heavens, without soft-pedaling on the racial horrors of the times.  Rhett is our dashing, charismatic hero throughout, walking a tightrope between his condemnation of slavery and his love for the South.

TAFT by Ann Patchett

John Nickel manages a bar on Beale Street in Memphis and has a thing for his new waitress, Fay Taft.  There are two big problems:  1) She's a teenager, and  2) She's white and he's black.  The race difference wouldn't seem to be that big a deal these days, even in Memphis (my hometown).  However, Fay, her troubled brother Carl, and Fay's mother are living with old-money relatives, and John knows that they would take a dim view of an older black boyfriend who runs a bar.  These various issues seem only to intensify the attraction between the two, but in some ways John is also father figure to both Fay and Carl, whose father has recently died, leaving the family destitute and forced to move from the hills of East Tennessee to live with the aforementioned relatives.  I couldn't quite grasp what it is about Fay and Carl that motivates John to protect them in ways that are not healthy for any of the parties involved.  One possible clue is the fact that John himself is father to 9-year-old Franklin, who now lives in Miami with his mother, Marion, whom John never married.  This is a sticking point with both parties, as she was ready to marry when he wasn't and vice versa.  Now he has developed a friendly relationship with her parents, still in Memphis, and a possibly more-than-friendly relationship with her sister Ruth.  Add to these Wallace, Cyndi, and Rose, who all work in the bar, and you have a nice ensemble of characters to keep the pot boiling.  The author, from Nashville herself, nails the dichotomy, or trichotomy, really, that is the state of Tennessee, with the mountain people at one end and the delta people at the other, and the less extreme valley people in the middle.  I've read that the author thinks that the title of this novel hurts its market potential, and I think she's right about that.  It's a shame this novel hasn't come to the attention of more readers.

SILVER SPARROW by Tayari Jones

James Witherspoon has two wives in Atlanta, with a daughter by each.  Wife #1, Laverne, and daughter Chaurisse are oblivious to the existence of wife #2, Gwen, and daughter Dana.  Gwen and Dana, however, are fully aware of their secondary status, despite their beauty and intelligence, and frequently sneak clandestine peeks at their rivals.  Meanwhile, James, with the help of his ever-present business partner, Raleigh, is barely maintaining a precarious equilibrium, keeping both households happy and, by all means, separate.  This balancing act teeters toward destruction when Dana and clueless Chaurisse become acquainted, due to Dana's morbid curiosity, coupled with Chaurisse's envy of Dana's looks and attitude.  Both Gwen and Dana realize the dangers inherent to revealing themselves to Laverne and Chaurisse, since James has made it clear that having both families in the same place at the same time is strictly taboo.  For example, James cannot allow Dana to take a summer job at Six Flags, since Chaurisse is planning to work there.  Dana's frustration leaps off the page and drives her to test the boundaries of what she can get away with, where her relationship with Chaurisse is concerned.  In some ways, she is taunting both Chaurisse and James, dropping obvious hints on Chaurisse that should raise suspicion with James when the fallout reaches him.  When circumstances make it virtually impossible to keep their friendship a secret, Dana realizes that she has stepped over the line and does her best to keep the resulting upheaval at bay.  If James's elaborate ruse crumbles, someone will have to pay, and this knowledge, on the part of everyone except the unsuspecting Laverne and Chaurisse, infuses the plot with tension.  Plus, the mention of many Atlanta landmarks brought a nostalgic and knowing smile to my face.

CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER by Tom Franklin

Larry Ott has been a pariah in his Mississippi hometown since he was a teenager. He had a date with Cindy Walker to go to a drive-in movie, and she vanished that night. Since there was no evidence and no body, there was no arrest, but Larry, as the chief suspect, has endured ostracism for 25 years. Now another girl has gone missing, and the scrutiny of Larry intensifies, until someone takes matters into his own hands and fires a bullet into Larry's chest. While Larry is in ICU, the local sheriff concludes that Larry attempted suicide. Silas Jones is now the town constable, and he knows better. He and Larry became childhood friends, because Silas and his single mother were living in a ramshackle cabin on Larry's family property. Larry is white, and Silas is black, and for some reason Silas has not made any effort to clear Larry's good name. It's obvious early in the book who tried to take Larry out, but the real story here is the relationship between two men that has gone sour and why. Our sympathies lie mainly with Larry, whose solitary existence is interrupted only by meanness on the part of his neighbors. He's not even welcome at church. He sells off his land, little by little, to scrape by, metaphorically chipping off pieces of himself until nothing is left. Silas, on the other hand, with his Ole Miss education and EMT girlfriend, has overcome the fetters of early poverty to become a respected member of the community. Larry's shining moment from the past was a Halloween party, for which he wore the same scary mask that his would-be killer wears. Silas, though, is really the one with something to hide. An unsettling revelation makes his secret even more of a burden, perhaps giving him the impetus to come clean.

THE COAL TATTOO by Silas House

There are a lot of books out there about sisters who are opposites in personality. (In Her Shoes comes to mind.) In other words, this struck me as sort of a tired premise. Easter is the older sister to whom maturity came early with the responsibility for raising her vivacious younger sibling, Anneth. There's also an older brother, Gabe, who doesn't really figure into the story at all. The action takes place in a coal mining town in Kentucky. Easter was a good student and had college aspirations until she became a surrogate parent, although, frankly, her grammar indicates that English was not her best subject. Anneth predictably marries and abandons a couple of husbands before finding true love with a younger man on his way to Vietnam. What annoyed me the most was how Easter continues to cling to Anneth, even after Anneth betrays her time and again. Somehow Anneth never really has to suffer the consequences of her selfishness and unreliability. Easter, on the other hand, sinks into an emotional abyss after her baby is stillborn. I suppose, though, that Easter's character is such that she has to forgive in order to recover and survive.

THE SONGCATCHER by Sharyn McCrumb

I expected this book to be a mellow story of Appalachia, and it was, but it was also a multi-generational tale with some suspense thrown in for good measure. The author was very good at whetting my appetite for what was going to happen next in one story line and then switching to events 200+ years earlier. Malcolm McCourry, by his own account, lives four distinct lives. Seamen seize him away from his first life on Islay, off the coast of Scotland, when he is nine years old, and he voyages to America, fulfilling an early prophecy that "the sea will take him." His tale alternates with that of his modern-day progeny, John Walker, a retired lawyer, and his estranged daughter Lark, who is making her name as a singer. The glue between the generations is a song called "The Rowan Stave" about a shepherdess receiving a magic stone in a graveyard. The main theme of the song, however, is that our journeys change us. Certainly this is the case with Malcolm, who brought the song from Scotland, and later with Lark, who is trying to resurrect it for her next album. Other songs play a role in the novel, including one that helps identify a murderer, but not as much as I expected. The supernatural actually is a larger player, with several benevolent ghosts and a family curse against the firstborn child, endured by Lark but seeming to be somewhat of her own making. There's actually another modern-day story line, that of Joe LeDonne, who's doing some soul searching on a backpacking trip. Certain events raise the possibility that his story is perhaps ten years later than Lark's, and McCrumb leaves us guessing about this timeline until the end.

SWEEPING UP GLASS by Carolyn Wall

Similarities to Mudbound abound in this novel (evil racists and even a repugnant aging parent), but I thought this was a much better read. Olivia is raising her grandson Will'm in Aurora, Kentucky, and housing her mother Ida, who spent some time in a mental institution and barely acknowledges Olivia as her daughter. The book is part love story, part mystery, and part family saga about 3 generations of women. Olivia is no saint and doesn't even know who is the biological father of her daughter Pauline. Pauline repeats some of her mother's mistakes and then leaves Will'm behind when she heads for Hollywood. Wolves turning up dead and missing an ear are indicative of the violence that simmers in Aurora, and Olivia suspects that someone is making a statement to get her attention. Her assumptions about the reason for her neighbors' animosity are inaccurate, however, and this is where the mystery comes in. My guess on the title is that it stems from an event at the beginning of the book. Olivia has stitched up a wounded wolf, who then escapes overnight by jumping through a window, only to meet a grim fate. Throughout the book Olivia is scraping together the shards of her life, trying to make sense of her heritage and her offspring. The wolves themselves are also a symbolic presence and perhaps represent innocent souls being hunted, tortured, and killed for no reason.

MUDBOUND by Hillary Jordan

I tried very hard to like this book, but it was just too predictable and tragically familiar. It's about bigotry in Mississippi right after WWII, and it's relentlessly depressing. There are six narrators, three white and three black. Laura and Henry McAllan are a white Memphis couple who move to a house without indoor plumbing on a Mississippi farm, and Laura is remarkably complacent about her new circumstances. The third white narrator is Jamie, Henry's much younger charismatic brother, scarred on the inside from his war experiences. Pappy, father to Henry and Jamie, joins the family in Mississippi, and he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The black narrators are the Jackson family, Hap and Florence, employed by the McAllans, and their son Ronsel who served in a black battalion in Germany. It's no surprise when Ronsel and Jamie become friends, despite constant admonishment from both families. The Jacksons are concerned for Ronsel's safety, and the McAllans feel that it's just plain wrong for whites to associate with blacks as peers. One could excuse the McAllans as products of their times, but that's letting them off the hook way too easily. Florence Jackson is my favorite character, a midwife to the black families, fiercely protective of her own, but compassionate enough to help Laura's daughters recover from whooping cough. Late in the novel, she decides to take matters into her own hands—finally someone with some gumption—but finds that someone else has beaten her to the punch.

THE HELP by Kathryn Stockett

Part of the enjoyment of reading this novel is in rooting against the self-righteous women you'll love to hate. The Junior Leaguers in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 60s, especially Hilly Holbrook, are leading the charge to encourage white families to build separate bathrooms for their black maids. On the other side of the battle against discrimination are the maids themselves, too frightened by the KKK and whatnot to take a stand, and one young white woman named Skeeter. Skeeter yearns to be a writer and manages to nab a job at the local newspaper providing tips on housekeeping. Since her privileged life has not afforded her any opportunity to develop any stain-removal skills, she turns to her friend Elizabeth's maid, Aibileen, on the sly. Skeeter then grabs the attention of an editor at Harper Row with her idea of writing a book based on interviews with black maids about their relationships with their employers. Eventually she becomes a pariah among her former friends, but she wins Aibileen's trust and also that of Minny, a maid whose sassy mouth has cost her a few jobs as well as her ability to find employment with Jackson's uppercrust. Minny works for Celia Foote, a woman with a white-trashy past and a husband who adores her. Celia has her own agenda, trying to gain acceptance by Hilly and her gang but doesn't stand a chance with the Southern gentry. Meanwhile, Skeeter can't find anyone who will tell her what happened to her family's maid, Constantine, who left town abruptly. The truth is a bit of a letdown after the buildup, but that's just a minor distraction. Stockett keeps up a brisk pace and lots of tension, as everyone, both white and black, clandestinely working on the book faces dire consequences if families, friends, or neighbors find out.

THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES by Sue Monk Kidd

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is narrated by a fourteen-year-old girl, and I found it to be much more juvenile than a Harry Potter book. The story takes place in South Carolina just as the Civil Rights Act has been signed. The plot is sappy and predictable and has been better told before; it felt like a knock-off of Huckleberry Finn. A white teenage girl (Lily) whose mother is dead leaves her abusive father, and hitchhikes out of town with a large black woman (Rosaleen) that Lily has busted out of jail. She finds solace with a group of black sisters who make their livings as beekeepers and gets a taste of what it's like to be the one who's a different color. I'm not sure which character Queen Latifah plays, but I can definitely envision Dakota Fanning in the lead role of the movie that's coming out this fall. The unique thing about this book, though, is that each chapter begins with a quoted fact from one of various books about bees, and I found these interesting and educational. Kidd doesn't bother enlightening us too much about the details of beekeeping, but she sheds a lot of light on the relationships and duties of the various members of the hive. For example, if something happens to the queen, the hive eventually becomes dysfunctional if she is not replaced very soon. This metaphor for a motherless child isn't even thinly veiled, but it works, I guess.

ONE MISSISSIPPI by Mark Childress

Mark Childress's One Mississippi is a wild ride, and I loved it, except for the finish. It's the tragicomic story of a teenage boy, Daniel, in culture shock when his family moves from Indiana to Mississippi in the 1970's. His newly integrated high school elects a black prom queen, and that's only the beginning. There is action galore, including a wrecked moving van, a house explosion, a car explosion—you name it. Teen angst, peer pressure, guilty consciences, toxic friendships, and identity issues abound, especially with regard to sexual orientation and race. Amidst all this emotional churning are many scenes that are laugh-out-loud funny, unless you're too young to have seen Sonny and Cher on TV. Childress seems to enjoy taking shots at the religious fanatics, painting them as hypocrites and bigots. The denouement is just like Empire Falls, and I didn't like it in that book either. Did the author plan this finale from the start, or did he paint himself into a corner and have to blast his way out? You decide.

DAYS OF THE ENDLESS CORVETTE by Man Martin

Days of the Endless Corvette by Man Martin is a nice blend of magic, homespun wisdom, and laugh-out-loud anecdotes. Earl Mulvaney is a man of few words and an extraordinary car mechanic. The term "Endless Corvette" refers to his theory that entire cars can be spawned from the leftover parts of other cars—in this case, a '53 Corvette. His saintly and unassuming nature wins over more than one detractor, and you'll wish that you had a friend like Earl. Actually, you'll wish that you'd known many of the characters in this book, or maybe you have. My personal favorite is Jimmy, Earl's boss, who doesn't believe in God but has no problem believing Earl's theory. In fact, he adds one of his own about cars having evolved from fish, fins and all. He's also the source of many of the hilarious irreverent anecdotes. I'll never forget the one about evolution and turning the other cheek. In some ways, this book reminded me of Daniel Wallace's Big Fish in that it rings true in many ways, particularly the outcome of Earl's romance, amid all the enchantment of a tall tale.