My first wife (and mother of my children) Denise is a smart and talented author. I still remember the first time she asked me to read an early copy of her work. She never let me do it again.
That being said, she recently released a new book, Earl, Honey. The book is loosely based on the real story of her family history. I enjoyed it. It's a southern coming-of-age story set in the 1920s - which is not my typical genre. Nevertheless, it's a poignant story with insight into the human condition, and its dramatic realities remind us how good we have it.
It's a story she learned, first via her grandmother, long after the events of the book take place. Those events shaped the lives of generations of her family.
It's a tough and heart-wrenching Southern Gothic read that covers incest, domestic abuse, and more. Check it out.
Here's the book's blurb from Amazon:
"Ever since Pa hit him in the head with the two-by-four, Earl had lived with blinders on. Not real blinders, of course, because that would be foolish. It was his own brain that blinkered him."
Earl Hahn is slow, the last one to catch on to things. Since the day his father hit him in the head with a 2x4 of loblolly pine, he's struggled with a "thickness in his brain." It takes him longer to make the connections others arrive at easily. When his father is prosecuted for the crime of incest, it feels like deliverance for Earl, his mother Lizzie Belle, and the entire Hahn family. Unfortunately, his father's abhorrent actions are not done exacting a price.
Everyone in the household will pay for their patriarch's crimes - no one more than Earl.
So begins a powerful coming-of-age tale about a shy, damaged boy who must overcome unimaginable personal tragedy - both as its victim and its perpetrator. Raw, honest, and filled with heart, Earl, Honey recounts an extraordinary search for redemption amid the perilous world of the 1920s American South.
