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« BOOK GROUP REVIEWS: The Lost City | Main | BOOKS: STONES INTO SCHOOLS »
Wednesday
Jun022010

BOOKS: BACKSEAT SAINTS by Joshilyn Jackson

"Buckle in for a wild ride..."




Backseat Saints
by Joshilyn Jackson

(Grand Central Publishing/Hachette, June 2010)

Review based on Advanced Reading Copy from Hachette
[Available June 8, 2010: Hardcover, 352 pages, $24.99 - Buy for less on Amazon.com]

Buckle in for a wild ride with BACKSEAT SAINTS, another Southern-fried triumph for Joshilyn Jackson -- I love her...I hate her (not really, it's author-envy: the talent!). She has done it again.

You will remember Rose Mae Lolley from Jackson's stunning debut GODS IN ALABAMA (2005). A minor character in GODS (the high school girlfriend of the unfortunate football god, Jim Beverly), Rose Mae is back as the main character in BACKSEAT SAINTS, along with her alter-egos, Mrs. Ro Grandee and Ivy Rose Wheeler (all one-and-the-same, in a surprisingly complex and multi-layered plot).

Mrs. Ro Grandee of Amarillo, Texas, at the warning of a mysterious fortune teller, has finally had enough of her bad-boy husband's physical abuse. After an aborted attempt at cold-blooded murder, the second-generation battered wife runs, intending to find freedom with the assumed identity of her neighbor's long-dead baby, Ivy Rose Wheeler. Before she can take on life as Ivy Rose, Rose Mae travels back to Fruiton, Alabama to confront her alcoholic, abusive father and then sets out on the trail of the mother who ran away and abandoned her when she was eight years old…

Did you get all that?

With her unique southern blend of pathos and wit, and her trademark outrageously original characters, Jackson crochets a bright lace doily of humor over very serious, decidedly non-funny, subjects: domestic abuse, alcoholism, abandonment, split personality and a host of other mental health issues. Like a modern-day Flannery O'Connor, somehow Joshilyn Jackson makes it all work and the effort is spectacular.

P.S. Note to JJ: Is this “The Girl Who Loved Guns?” I was paying attention!

SEE ALSO: Focus on The Author: Joshilyn Jackson 2.0

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