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The South—warts and all—are on full display in this sweeping novel that covers multiple decades and generations. While characters and events stack up like crumpled cars on a zero-visibility freeway in the fog, it’s the lifelong relationship between one man and one woman that sits at the heart of this homage to a way of life long past.
From pre World War I to post World War II, readers are taken on a journey through the Georgia that existed several decades after the American Civil War. It’s a jaunty trip following the fortunes of a farm lass who pines for the city and a sometime preacher who’s only modestly successful selling salvation but fabulously successful selling automobiles. Faye is an unsophisticated teenager with flaming red hair and a fiery temper, determined to get to the epicenter of all things cosmopolitan—Atlanta. Hill is a smooth-talking, good-looking man of the cloth and the coupe, determined to get Faye in the sack. It is not really giving anything away to say that he does. However, it is to his everlasting chagrin.
The author unfolds this story of love, lust, marriage, divorce, revenge, regret, and eventually responsibility that unfolds as the years fly by. Along the way, times change irrevocably, as do peoples’ fortunes. Yet one thing stays the same—Faye’s indomitable bitterness for what she sees as the life she should have lived. The author’s style is as conversational as beauty parlor gossip. Her main characters ring true in their environment, and while one is empathetically human, the other may be hard to like, but is impossible to forget.