Synopsis
The bestselling author of Charms for the Easy Life reads "her best novel since Ellen Foster."
Kaye Gibbons' award-winning novels of Southern family life have won rave reviews coast to coast. Now, she tells the "story of family dislocation and crisis in restrained prose of unflinching clarity, with a honing eye for the small domestic details that conjure a time, place and emotional atmosphere." (Publishers Weekly)
To the people of Bend of the River Road, Maggie Barnes is "the Barnes woman with all the problems." To her family, she is the unpredictable wife, elusive mother, and adored daughter-in-law, and to her maid, Pearl, she is the mistress who must be cared for like a child.
Between the suicidal lows and delirious highs, young Hattie Barnes struggles to find a place in her mother's heart. She observes her mother's vain attempts at normalcy, and then watches as she is driven off to the hospital psychiatric ward. Only later...
Publishers Weekly
``Both forgiving and healing are true arts,'' says Hattie Barnes, the narrator of Gibbons's moving novel; readers will be thoroughly in thrall to her clear, true voice and to the poignant story she tells. In flashback, Hattie describes the summer and fall of 1967, when she was 12 and living in Bend of the River, N.C., and when her beautiful, psychotically volatile mother, Maggie, was temporarily committed to the psychiatric ward at Duke University. A near-miracle occurs: for the first time in nearly two decades, Maggie becomes stabilized on medication. And, for the first time in her life, Hattie experiences a mother who relates to, touches and cares for her. Gibbons tells this story of family dislocation and crisis in restrained prose of unflinching clarity, with a honing eye for the small domestic details that conjure a time, place and emotional atmosphere. She conveys the hellish condition of a home where one parent is delusional and dangerous to herself and others; where the other is a full-time caretaker; and where the children, Hattie and her older brother Freddie, are lonely, anxious, bewildered victims. The fifth member of the family is the grandfather, Mr. Barnes, a manipulative bully who protects and spoils his daughter-in-law, and indulges her every manic whim from his ample wallet; he is the truly destructive element in the Barnes family's lives. The dynamics of this dysfunctional group, their balance precariously maintained by the calm ministrations of their black housekeeper, Pearl, are spelled out with tender understanding. Gibbons is equally sensitive when conveying the aberrant wiring of Maggie's jangled brain. This is her best novel since Ellen Foster, a haunting story that begs to be read in one sitting. BOMC and QPBC featured alternates. (Sept.)