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A SEEPING WOUND

Name: A SEEPING WOUND
Author: Darryl Wimberley
ISBN: 978-91-7637-036-0

by Darryl Wimberley ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 2016

The sordid history of Florida’s turpentine camps is riveting; the characters less so.

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A Muscogee woman and a World War I veteran try to save the soldier’s sister and brother-in-law, held against their will in a brutal turpentine camp in 1920s Florida.

Scott Hampton comes from New York to northern Florida to search for his missing sister, Sarah, and her husband, Franklin, who’d gone south for work only to be imprisoned in a turpentine camp run by the ruthless Captain Riggs. Also held there is Martha LongFoot, the daughter of a Muscogee woman and a slave, who grew up as Riggs’ sexual captive and now serves as the camp’s resident “Medicine Woman.” (Martha narrates half the story, describing life inside the camp, while the rest is told in the third person). Wimberley (Devil’s Slew, 2011, etc) does a nice job keeping up the suspense as Hampton searches for his relations, and those unfamiliar with the history of camps like these will find no shortage of fascinating—and horrifying—context: from how debtors (and others) were essentially enslaved in them to the particulars of how workers extract resin from pines for turpentine. But while readers may be new to the history here, they’ll likely find the characters more familiar, from the brave (and bland) leading man to a bevy of recognizable villains (an oily attorney, an underhanded judge, the sadistic Riggs, etc.). Wimberley’s most memorable creation is Martha, who endures a monstrous childhood—and is severely disfigured, for reasons readers will later learn—to become one of the camp’s savviest operators. But in highlighting Martha’s resilience, Wimberley comes a bit too close to buying into the "magical minority" trope, in which a person of color has almost otherworldly wisdom or skills. Indeed, she can “lift a man onto a mule,” shoot a squirrel square in the neck (so as not “to mess up the meat”), and cure various ailments, all while recounting her life in vivid prose. Ultimately, a more nuanced characterization would have better served the story—and the reader.

The sordid history of Florida’s turpentine camps is riveting; the characters less so.

Pub Date: June 15, 2016

ISBN: 978-91-7637-036-0

Page Count: 312

Publisher: l'Aleph/Wisehouse

Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DEVIL'S SLEW
by Darryl Wimberley

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KALEIDOSCOPE
by Darryl Wimberley

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PEPPERFISH KEYS
by Darryl Wimberley

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CARRIE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1974

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...

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Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).

All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."

Pub Date: April 8, 1974

ISBN: 0385086954

Page Count: 216

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE
by Stephen King & Peter Straub

- BOOK REVIEW
NEVER FLINCH
by Stephen King

- BOOK REVIEW
YOU LIKE IT DARKER
by Stephen King

- PERSPECTIVES
Appreciations: Carrie Turns 40

- SEEN & HEARD
Stephen King Used ‘Carrie’ Advance To Support Mom

- BOOK TO SCREEN
New ‘Carrie’ Series in the Works at Amazon

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.