I’m going to try to come near stringing the adequate words together that describe how much I loved this book. I’ll cut to the chase and say it was so good, I didn’t want it to end. Temple Secrets is the kind of well crafted book that, once closed, causes you to wonder what to do next with your life. Author Susan Gabriel created a story chock-full of Southern characters and never once condescended to anything campy, rather, she infused every character with soul as they walked the wire of a story so unique as to be plausible, of character nuance so defined, you understood the underlying motivation behind every thought and deed in this electrifyingly unusual gem of common history experienced individually by players so intertwined, their lives are domino effects wrought from the hands of each other. And oh, the tone of this book: it is bluntly in your face without being offensive. Susan Gabriel writes in a direct, brass tacks voice that is howlingly funny, for all its taboo subjects, and I relished every line. The premise of Temple Secrets is this: In blue-blooded, aristocratic Savannah, where the mansions are gothic and imposing as they retain the character of days gone by, supercilious eccentric, Iris Temple, is on her last leg. For decades, she has ruled the roost of everything and everyone around her. She is one of Savannah’s inflexible old guard and proud of it to the point that she wields her power position in society like a sword. Hers is a personality so full of controlling disdain that she is feared not only by her family and staff, but by the denizens of Savannah, whose tether she keeps tight by her family’s book of secrets, which details intimate, damaging facts best not publically revealed. Iris is estranged from her full-grown daughter, looks down on her mulatto half-sister, who lives with her, and is catered to beyond reason by a handful of staff, who prefer not to stir the waters of Iris’ own self-image. It is a dynamic changer, when Iris is incapacitated by a stroke, and suffice it to say the ghosts of her past come out to haunt, literally and figuratively, which wouldn’t happen in most places, but it can and does in Savannah. In chapters detailing the individual character’s connection to Iris, the story morphs into an incestuous web you didn’t see coming. And at the heart of this story is the Temple Book of Secrets; someone has taken it upon themselves to publish part of its content, but the mystery is nobody knows who or why. It’s hard to write more at this point, without needing a spoiler alert, and I don’t want to deprive the reader of the joy to be found in this bounding story, so I will summarize by saying this novel is so engaging, so thrilling and unique that I stand beside many clamoring for a sequel!

   There’s a good reason the Atlanta Journal Constitution called Ron Rash “one of the major writers of our time.” To me, he is this and more. Ron Rash writes in a gritty, mountain vernacular that can’t be faked; one has to come from it and know it as their own voice of consciousness in order to wield it as plausibly as he. Rash’s language, therefore, is its own reasoning; it speaks of a clear-cut, hard-edged, uncompromising way of living in the world devoid of the illusion of optimism. One wonders, as they read Rash, if it is the jaded wrappings of cynicism or the unvarnished truth behind his tightly crafted novels. This is a writer who delivers the dark notes of beaten humanity in such a way that there is hope. In The World Made Straight, Travis Shelton comes from nothing, on the cusp of manhood in an unforgiving North Carolina mountain community, where drug-dealing is a viable livelihood, in this hardscrabble region with few opportunities outside of one’s own wits. It is the glimmer of something more that drives him to prove himself to his rough-hewed, hard-nosed father. Travis seeks to better himself after one fight too many; he leaves the tobacco fields on his family’s land and presents himself at the trailer of a local named Leonard, who is both drug-dealer and mentor, in that he is the only one in Travis’ sphere who, at one time, amounted to anything, though fate made it short-lived. Under Leonard’s influence, Travis pursues his high school GED, while shouldering the fall-out of the one false move he made, when he riled the shackles of local heavy-weight, Carlton Toomey, when he trespassed on his land. These are mountain characters who play by their own lawless rules, in a landscape where it’s every man for himself. In a climate still stinging from the horrors of the Civil War, the characters are born beneath the shadow of the ties that atavistically bind them, albeit through a sense of random tribal placement that haunts this story in an unfolding mystery, the impact of which the characters are not completely aware, until the looming puzzle work fits. It is a small world, in The World Made Straight, but it is universal in implication. Self-worth, justice, revenge, and hope against all odds flavors this story, which ends in notes of satisfaction and just deserves.

I cannot recall the last time I read a book set in the South wherein the personality and cadence of the dialogue was pitch-perfect. Jonathan Odell goes way deeper than Southern parlance in “Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League;” he delves right into the middle of Mississippi’s idiomatic speech, much of which is expressed by suggestion. The vernacular in this book tells half the story, and because of its spot-on attitude, we know more of the characters than any well-written descriptive paragraph could ever depict.
Set in the small Delta town of Delphi, it is the 1950’s, and segregation, prejudice and class division are an issue. After Hazel Ishee, who comes from little, meets the charismatic Floyd Graham in the Rexall Drug Store in Tupelo, they marry and move to Delphi because Floyd has big dreams of starting his own car dealership. Amidst a town set in its ways and customs, they begin a life together in which Hazel knows she does not fit in. As a loner in Delphi, her ways blossom into an eccentricity the entire town talks about, then the cruel hand of fate steps in to exacerbate her isolation, which doesn’t begin to mend until Floyd hires Vida as the family’s maid. Vida has an agenda in accepting the position, which has to do with her history with the local sheriff, who lives next door. As Hazel and Vida’s relationship evolves from one of mutual suspicion to friendship, the division between the races is explored and bridged, and the reader comes to learn that no one person exists in this small town without effecting its whole. This is a fast paced, thrilling book that takes a heavy era in time and infuses it with quirky humor. The characters are well drawn and representative of certain sects of society without being campy. It is a story of people who seek to be more than they are, only to realize they have been enough all along. 

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