One of the hallmarks about contemporary Southern fiction that I've been drawn to is its depiction of family dynamics. Relatives are an important part of much fiction by authors in other areas, but in the South, there is always that foundation of family and the dream of coming home.
The title of North Carolina's own Thomas Wolfe's novel may be You Can't Go Home Again, but Southern fiction is particularly adept in ringing true when it affirms that you never left home. It's in your heart wherever you go. And your kin is right there with you, welcome or not.
Two novels that delve into the depths of family strength and the despair kin can cause are The Lost Saints of Tennessee by Amy Franklin-Willis and Nashville Chrome by Rick Bass. For more, please continue below the fold.
In the novel by Franklin-Wllis, Ezekiel is about as unhappy a man as can be. He hasn't adjusted well to his divorce, his hovering mother has lung cancer, the once promising young man has a dead-end job after dropping out of college and his dog is really old. Bad as all that is, Zeke's real problem is that his twin brother died 10 years ago. And no matter what his mother wants him to believe and no matter how much his sisters and ex-wife want him to talk, Zeke is having none of it.
Having reached his nadir, Zeke loads his dog and a Twain novel into his old pickup and heads toward Pigeon Forge to do in himself and Tucker the dog. He ends up at the refuge that is the home of his cousins in Virginia, the people who took him in years ago when he was a young college freshman and full of promise. They love him more than he does.
Using two timeslines of the past and present (which is actually our past as well in the mid-80s), Franklin-Willis gradually lets the reader know that the matriarch is more than just a bit controlling. She doesn't flounce. But she controls. And she makes bad choices. Just as the reader thinks we've got one heck of an interesting monster in Zeke's mother, Franklin-Wllis switches gears and inserts a interesting bridge in the novel when Zeke's mother takes over the narrative.
She is alternately a monster, a misunderstood woman, a hard-working mother and, always, a human being fully capable of making tragic mistakes and fully aware of it. This soliloquy -- a moment out of time -- was remarkable at first reading by the way Franklin-Willis took on Lillian's point of view so completely and forcefully. Lillian wanted love, knew what she was doing was wrong and the ache of knowledge of both the want and the sin changes the entire novel. No matter what else happens in this story and the way it is told, the reader knows this is not just Zeke's story. This is about how family affects each other up and down the generations. As Lillian says, "Of course, in the end, it winds up right back with the family."
In order for Zeke to quit spinning wheels with his life, he's going to have to realize he's a grown-up and a parent now, the one who makes decsions. He's going to have to walk in his mother's shoes in regards to his own daughters and, in the process, gain a better understanding of his mother. It's only then that the author lets the reader learn what happened to Zeke's long-lost twin brother. What happens to both mother and son and the kin they love means neither mother nor son should condemn the other. If anyone can look at the other's mistakes and forgive, it should be them. Zeke has a very hard time with this. And Lillian has the same problem.
She also has the problem of not believing she deserves forgiveness. As she states: "Mistakes can be forgiven but not that kind of sin. It does not deserve forgiveness. Instead, it sits in the bottom of your soul, twisting and turning over the years, so you never forget it's there."
That's what has been eating Zeke up for years. He's never forgotten what's at the bottom of his soul.
Although this is not a perfect novel, it does take great care to chronicle a plausible journey by a family and by a man who finds he is a grown-up. Zeke has to take his own place within the family and find he has come into his own whether he was ready for it or not.
This novel celebrates the beauty in hardscrabble, ordinary lives and the second, third and fourth chances we give those we love if we give in to that love. Interestingly enough, though, the characters who get second chances and those who are forgiven may not be the ones usually suspected. At times, the story reads like women's fiction and even veers toward romance when Zeke ends up in Virginia and his cousins' comely neighbor immediately catches his eye. But Zeke is no romantic hero. More than anything, having a history with another character is what dictates how Zeke and the other characters react to each other. How have they felt about each other underlies what they do now.
Another novel in recent years that chronicles family and celebrates a love of words is Nashville Chrome. Rick Bass has written glorious, thick, rich and deep stories and nonfiction about the West, as well as The Diezmo, a slim novel about a band of would-be militia conquerors of Mexico sent by Sam Houston on a mission that goes horribly wrong. He doesn't automatically come to mind as a Southern writer. So it was a surprise that he went to the deep South and to music for this fictionalized account of the Browns. They were a sibling trio who created remarkable harmonies that pioneered American music, and they crossed paths with everyone from Elvis and, in passing, Johnny Cash, to Chet Atkins and Jim Reeves.
The writing about music and harsh survival by a family living off the land is beautiful. So are his depictions of family relationships, as complicated as any layered harmonies created by the siblings in their music. But, as with all fiction based on real people, there are times it's highly uncomfortable to read and wondering what's real and what was manufactured to make a point. Bass thanks Maxine, Jim Ed and Bonnie, the three Brown siblings, still alive when the novel was published in 2010, in his acknowledgements, adding to the uncomfortable factor. Oldest sibling Maxine, the magical one who is left all alone, makes for a sad central figure but doesn't have center stage often. Many of the big events in their lives happen offstage.
Bass instead uses the story of the Browns to write about how people connect, either in harmony or not. He writes about people who take, such as Elvis and a very young filmmaker at the end of the novel, and even Maxine, and those who give, such as the Browns' mother Birdie and always-happy sister Bonnie, and even Maxine. There is meditating on greatness and the hunger for it, and "the heartlessness of ambition" which Maxine realizes when old, even while still she still craves recognition.
Life is a search for harmony in Bass's novel. That this search often is complicated not only by personalities, but by how people fit within the framework of their family, results in more than simple chords. It results in sweeping movements and complex note progressions, with themes that swirl back exactly when they should return so that a reader can nod in recognition: Yes, I know that tune. It's the music of kinship.
Are there other books lately that have touched well on the themes of kin or music? For the latter, one of the best I've ever read is the remarkable Rafi Zabor novel, The Bear Comes Home, from 1998. Zabor is a jazz musician and that's just the way his novel about a sentient bear reads. And for family, one of my favorites remains Marilynne Robinson's Gilead from 2006.