Theo of Golden

 

Theo of Golden, by Allen Levi (2023), 400 pages

Theo is an elderly Portuguese man that seemingly appears out of nowhere in Golden, Georgia. He quickly charms the locals and begins a quest to hand deliver portraits that are displayed in the local coffee shop back to the subjects of those portraits. Through the process, Theo gradually reveals a bit about himself while taking in the stories of the people behind the art. A deep narrative is revealed and secrets uncovered. 

In some ways, this is a lovely story of a long life, regrets, and renewed purpose. In other ways, it reads like "Chicken Soup for the Soul". I listened to the book and, at some points, had to stop because it just got too saccharine. I enjoyed the premise of the novel, but the perfect, continually heartwarming endings of each story put a damper on any sort of ability to connect with the characters. There is a "surprise" at the end of the book. Careful readers, though, will not be shocked.

The Sweetness of Water

The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris, 363 pages

In the waning days of the Civil War, an awkward and isolated Georgia couple is disturbed to hear that their only son has been killed while fighting for the South. Despondent, the father begins farming his land with the help of two recently emancipated brothers, one of whom is mute. When the dead son returns (apparently there was some miscommunication), the family must reckon with their standing in the community, as well as their son's experiences in war.

This was a surprising and beautifully written story of very different people being brought together by odd circumstances, and the ways that we survive the toughest of situations. Well worth a read.

Ring Shout

Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark, 192 pages

It's 1922, and the Klan is raging in Macon, Georgia. Maryse is a young Black woman who's making a living bootlegging and fighting demons — specifically, the pointy-headed, hate-fueled Ku Kluxes that the human Klans may turn into — using the magic of Shouters and a Gullah woman, as well as a mystical sword that responds to her thirst for revenge. As the Ku Kluxes grow in numbers, and as other hate-filled creatures manifest around the screening of Birth of a Nation at Stone Mountain, Maryse must decide whether she's going to let her own hatred and quest for vengeance rule her, or if she can fight these demons in another way.

This is an AMAZING dark fantasy novel that reverberates through the last 100 years of U.S. history, and strips bare the white supremacy and problematic politics of today. It's powerful and unrelenting, and I can't recommend it heartily enough. This book needs to be read.

*This book will be published Oct. 13, 2020.

Cane

Cane / Jean Toomer, 245 p.

 A classic of the Harlem Renaissance, Cane is a wonderfully weird combination of prose, poetry, drama and song, which evokes small-town rural Georgia in the 1920s with a gorgeous vividness.  The writing, in all forms, is sensual - that is, it constructs the setting in a way that incorporates all the senses, almost as if the reader could taste the air. 

Difficult to summarize, the work incorporates the author's experiences as a light-skinned urban northerner who moves to Georgia to teach.  One of the members of our Classics Book Group observed correctly, I think, that the poetry is especially strong, as in "Her Lips Are Copper Wire:"

whisper of yellow globes
gleaming on lamp-posts that sway
like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog

and let your breath be moist against me
like bright beads on yellow globes

telephone the power-house
that the main wires are insulate

(her words play softly up and down
dewy corridors of billboards)

then with your tongue remove the tape
and press your lips to mine
till they are incandescent

Kill'em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul

Kill'em and Leave:Searching for James Brown and the American Soul by James McBride,  256 pages.
McBride, winner of the National Book award for his novel The Good Lord Bird, presents an engaging, yet almost necessarily incomplete exploration of one of the most elusive celebrities of our time, James Brown.
McBride searches far and wide and finds a wealth of contradictory information about Brown, and illuminates much that was formerly obscure about a lonely, secretive man. Some that knew and loved James Brown, like the Reverend Al Sharpton give flattering accounts, others, former band members and distant relatives give less generous accounts. Much of the book dwells on the fate of Brown's estate, an estimated $100 million that was to go towards helping poor children in South Carolina and Georgia, but has instead gone to legal fees as the will has been contested in the years since Brown's death. An interesting account.

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray  285 pp.

Janisse Ray is a naturalist and environmental activist. She grew up in a junkyard...literally. Her family owned a junkyard in south Georgia on U.S 1. She lived there with her parents and siblings, surrounded by derelict cars, broken washing machines, tractors, and a miscellany of other detritus her father accumulated to repair or sell as salvage parts. In alternating chapters Ray reminices about her childhood and details the destruction of the old growth longleaf pine forests in the south. She includes in family memories her father's care for injured animals, wild and domestic, his bouts of mental illness which required hospitalization, and his talent for recycling junk into usable items. The environmental chapters cover the rapid destruction of the forests and the subsequent and heartbreaking endangerment and extinction of species that relied on the very specific ecology of those forests.  I ran across this book when searching for recommendations for our April "Staff Picks." Since it was about a part of Georgia where I have family, I thought I'd give it a look. I'm glad I did. The biography parts are interesting and I learned a lot about the unique ecology of the longleaf pine forests that sadly have dwindled to just a few areas of the south. I wish I could have seen them as they were when this country began.