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This is the dark side of the small-town South, and the people you meet are not people you would want to meet anywhere else. The Graney boys and their crippled mother are driving to Parchman prison where their brother is to be executed for murder. Three boys drive to Memphis to give blood to an injured friend, get drunk on the journey, and wind up in jail.
A lawyer named Wade is kidnapped at gunpoint by the father of a hopelessly damaged boy. A doctor's neglect and incompetence had caused the damage, but Wade's slick legal tricks had gotten him off, leaving the father with crippling medical bills and a murderous hatred for the lawyer.
Some of the stories are a little lighter. Gilbert Griffin seeks out menial jobs in nursing homes where he can find residents with a little money he can con them out of. Lawyer Mark Stafford cheats his clients out of settlement money in an old lawsuit, abandons his family and his legal practice, and is last seen swimming in the warm waters of the Caribbean.
Bobby Carl Leach claims American Indian blood and opens a casino, only to be ruined by the estranged husband of his sexy mistress.
The one character you feel compassion for is Adrian Keane, known as a "funny boy" because of his homosexuality. Driven out of small-town Mississippi, he wound up in San Francisco, where he contracted AIDS. He has come home to die, but nobody will go near him. His mother finds an old black woman who will take him in, and with her he finds acceptance.
Grisham is, of course, a master storyteller, and I have enjoyed his novels as much as those of anyone writing today. It's interesting that he has chosen to highlight the seamy side of life in the South, and while I didn't like the people he's telling me about, I couldn't stop reading about them.
CLASSIC SOUTHERN CHARM
Ever since Dickens created Ebeneezer Scrooge, authors have been trying to write Christmas stories that would be equally lasting. The list includes Truman Capote, Charles Schultz and Dr. Seuss, and now includes South Carolina's best-selling ("Sullivan's Island," "Isle of Palms," "Shem Creek") Dorothea Benton Frank.
Actually, this one was first published in 2007, and is out in paperback with many new recipes, ranging from She Crab Soup and Mother's Turkey Dressing to Frances Mae's Hot Chicken Salad and Mike Benton's Eggnog.
The story is told by a 93-year-old woman with a highly dysfunctional family who yearns for the warm, loving holidays of her childhood. They were made possible by the woman who raised her, an imposing Gullah-speaking black woman named Pearl. The magic left the holiday when Pearl died.
Then the doorbell rings and Pearl is back from heaven, 133 years old, sassy as ever, and ready to start making biscuits and rum balls.
In no time she has shaped up the quarrelsome grandchildren, patched up some shaky marriages, cooked up a marvelous dinner and vanished again, promising that "I'm just a thought away."
Frank may have evoked the spirit of an old-fashioned Southern Christmas, but it's as sticky as a cinnamon roll and woefully short on magic.
