Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Profane love, homecoming, and forgiveness are all a part of Mary Lee Settle's remarkable new book. After the heroine returns home to West Virginia from Europe, she must confront her past in the guise of Charley Bland. Charley is the home town's wicked bachelor, who is too good looking to marry, and who fulfills the narrator's adolescent dreams until they turn to ashes during a six-year affair. Settle examines the destruction and redemption of love and family with a hauntingly beautiful prose that brings to life the characters and customs of Southern society. Her precept says one must be forgiven by the past in order to go into the future. This adage, along with many valuable observations on life and love, will be cherished and recognized by all her readers." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
A dissection of family existence at its most corrosive
In this moving and brilliant narrative of doomed love, Mary Lee Settle tells of a triangular affair set in the small town of Canona, West Virginia. The novel's narrator, a thirty-five-year-old widow and writer, returns from a self-imposed European exile to find her hometown much as she left it decades ago. One thing does change upon her arrival, however; she takes Charley Bland, Canona's most eligible bachelor and the object of her schoolgirl crush, as her lover. The third person in the profane trinity is Charley's mother, a woman who believes no female worthy of her son. Mrs. Bland serves to fuel the lovers' creativity as they arrange clandestine meetings. With trademark skill and wit, Settle spins a bittersweet story in which she artfully reveals the mores of Canona's closed, upper-class society and of its less prosperous underculture.
Synopsis
In this moving and brilliant narrative of doomed love, Mary Lee Settle tells a triangular affair set in the small town of Canona, West Virginia. The novel's narrator, a thirty-five-year-old widow and writer, returns from a self-imposed European exile to find her hometown much as she left it decades ago. One thing does change upon her arrival, however; she takes Charley Bland, Canona's most eligible bachelor and the object of her schoolgirl crush, as her lover. The third person in the profane trinity is Charley's doting mother, a woman who believes no female worthy of her son. Mrs. Bland serves to fuel the creativity of the lovers as they arrange clandestine meetings. With trademark skill and wit, Settle spins a bittersweet story in which she reveals the mores of Canona's closed, upper-class society and of its less prosperous underculture. She artfully employs a mixture of humor, compassion, satire, and irony to perform a dissection of family existence at its most corrosive.