STORK BITE

Simonds offers a historical novel that explores issues of race, class, and relationships in 20th-century America.

It’s 1913, and soon after the story opens, 17-year-old David Walker, who’s Black, unintentionally kills a White man in Jim Crow–era Louisiana. The man had claimed that the hunting ground on which they stood was “pretty much whites only” and threatened David’s dog. The ensuing altercation led to the elder man’s accidental death, and now David is forced to leave his life behind and flee. He eventually makes his way to Texas, where he meets the Tatums, who offer him work chopping wood and farming cotton in exchange for shelter and safety. David later teaches the Tatums to read, but his own family members are never far from his thoughts. After several years with the Tatums, it’s finally time for him to move on and continue his journey. The second section of the novel, predominantly set in Shreveport, Louisiana, in the 1920s, ’40s, and ’60s, initially seems to be an entirely different novel with a new set of characters that include bookkeeper Cargie Barre and her husband, Thomas, as well as Mae Compton, a young woman searching for financial security and passion. Simonds weaves the two storylines together before the novel’s conclusion, but the effect is slightly jarring, as readers will wonder where David is for a good portion of the novel. Even so, the prose remains vivid throughout, as Simonds has a knack for capturing the colloquialisms of early-20th-century America. Some lines are particularly evocative, as when she writes that “Fear thrashed in David’s gut like a pain-savaged animal.” Mae is a dynamic character, as well: a woman navigating the sexist limitations of her society but never willing to settle for less than what she truly wants.

An oddly structured but evocatively written work about finding and preserving kinship.