The Southern Gothic lives on.
Eleanor Henderson, author of “Ten Thousand Saints” which was named one of the 10 best books of 2011 by the New York Times, has written this sprawling, gothic, potboiling epic set in Cotton County, Georgia, in the 1930s. Performed by Allyson Johnson brilliantly in the multiple drawling accents of rural Georgia characters, both black and white, this is a long slog. Longer than the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearest town. The story begins with an elaborate ruse to cover up decades of rape and incest. Elma Jessup, daughter of the white sharecropper Juke Jessup, supposedly births what the newspapers call the “Gemini Twins,” two babies of different races. While one baby is the child of a quick sexual liaison between Elma and Frank, the son of George who owns the land, the other supposedly resulted from her rape by a black worker on the farm, Genus Jackson. In what is only the beginning of brutal and bloody events, Genus is lynched and dragged dead behind a truck for all to see. But it is far more complicated. The black baby has actually been born to Nan, the black serving girl on the farm, mute because her own mother cut out her tongue as a baby (for sick reasons). And Nan has been continually raped by Juke. Though she loved and slept with Genus. And since Juke could never admit this was his baby, he kept the two girls (equally pregnant) locked up in a cabin for their final months of pregnancy (by the way, lots of sweating) until the miracle could be presented to the incredulous town that his daughter had birthed two babies of different races. But even more disturbingly, Nan’s mother, Ketty, who raised Elma after the death of Juke’s wife, turns out to have been forced to sleep with both Juke and George. So has Juke slept with his own daughter? A young doctor, who is a polio survivor, decides to research this puzzle and ends up falling in love with, and marrying, Elma. And it is only through his blood tests of all parties involved, that the questionable parentage of all is revealed, no small thanks to blood types and the passing on of sickle cell anemia. The interbreeding and unbelievably complicated genetics of the remaining 14 CDs is beyond belief. I felt by the end of this audio book as if I needed a chart to remember who had slept with whom and what babies resulted. Other than the fact that the subject matter by modern standards is revolting, this is actually a very well written saga. Cringing slightly at the portrayal of characters who don’t seem to rise particularly beyond caricatures (the barefoot country slut, the mute put-upon black maid, the carelessly drunk sharecropping father, the gentle black giant whose “manhood” is always on display), I nonetheless enjoyed many well turned phrases by Ms. Henderson, whose metaphors excel in evoking the rural south -- the sick baby lying in Nan’s lap, “like a spineless cut of fatback.” It’s a long, hard read, evoking a world we pray no longer exists.