Imagine a small Southern town where everyone knows each other and on the surface, it’s a beatific, innocent place. A visitor might look around this town, named Falls, North Carolina, and see happily married couples, successful children, thriving businesses, and churches of every denomination. Okay, now scratch the surface. What do you see? Everything isn’t as perfect as it seems. That is the subject of these three loosely connected novellas by Allan Gurganus.
Each story focuses on characters who have a deep yearning to form a connection with others.
• “Fear Not”: When Susan was 14 years old her father accidentally died in a horrific, very public way at the hands of his lifelong best friend, Dennis, who is also Susan’s godfather. Dennis, the married father of three, is wracked with guilt—just consumed with it. Susan is grieving. Her mother has checked out mentally having witnessed her husband’s death and takes to her bed. Dennis spends a lot of time alone with Susan, and before you know it, he gets Susan pregnant—and she’s only 14. What happens to her in the ensuing years is the soul of this heart wrenching story.
• “Saints Have Mothers”: Caitlin Mulray is a bit much. She is a high school junior who is perfect. And I mean perfect: Kind to everyone (and she’s a teenage girl!), brilliant, musical, talented in every possible way, and gorgeous. She is also compassionate, working tirelessly with and for those who have less. The summer before her senior year, she goes to Africa to teach. While she is there, something horrific happens that sends her mother reeling, as well as her father and stepmother in California, her twin 11-year-old brothers, and basically the entire town of Falls, North Carolina. She is, after all, their golden girl. This melodramatic novella is written in the first person by Caitlin’s less-than-perfect mother, Jean, who is having an identity crisis all her own. It’s a difficult story to enjoy because Caitlin and Jean are tough characters to like.
• “Decoy”: Bill Mabry has a bad heart—so bad that it was diagnosed as a ticking time bomb when he was just a child. But the small town of Falls, North Carolina has one of its own as the favorite physician, and Doc has sworn to care for Bill with great care and keep him alive. Told in the first person from Bill’s point of view, this is a love letter to Doc and life in a small town. All is well, almost idyllic, until tragedy strikes Falls when the normally placid river overflows its banks after a hurricane, causing death and destruction.
This is a slow read. Yes, the stories frequently drag, getting bogged down in mindless details. But it’s more than that. There is something about the writing that makes it difficult to read at times. Hence, three stars.
