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| The Blue Star By Tony Earley Little, Brown 304 pp., $23.99 |
The pleasure of a good story, simply told
Tony Earley's sequel to 'Jim the Boy' delivers Depression-era pathos.
from the March 11, 2008 edition
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"That make-believe intimacy, and the make-believe years on which it was built, seemed to remain comfortably settled around their shoulders – even as they left Hernando and Juanita sitting in their broken chairs by their ghostly stove, forever arguing about walnuts."
The uncles settle a little into the background this go-round, and there's no word from best friend/rival Penn Carson, who's been spirited off to boarding school. In his place, Earley substitutes would-be ladykiller Dennis Deane, whose goofball antics get a melancholy subplot of their own.
Jim's friends also include ex-girlfriend Norma, a brainy blonde who still comes over every day to quilt with Jim's mom, much to Jim's consternation.
When he complains that they were "just dating," his Uncle Zeno explains, "You were just dating, Jim. Norma was picking. And when she picked you, your Mama picked her. Norma was going to be the daughter she never had. That's what that quilt was about."
As with the first novel, the strongest emotions are those unspoken. In "Jim the Boy," Earley dealt with racism and mountain versus town rivalries, as well as the Great Depression.
Take the chapter "The Wide Sea," when Jim travels out of state with Uncle Al to buy two Belgian draft horses – to find only their corpses. Before leaving, the debt-riddled farmer shot all his animals to keep the bank from getting them.
Uncle Al shoots a carrion bird hovering over the carcasses and then takes his nephew for their first view of the ocean. "I wish we could've got there sooner," he tells Jim. "Me too," Jim replies.
In "The Blue Star," the rivalry between farmers and "lintheads," the workers in the cotton mills, and the prejudice Chrissie all too often faces for being half-Cherokee work alongside the war to propel the novel forward.
"The Blue Star" isn't quite as free from the taint of melodrama as "Jim the Boy": Chrissie's mom turns out to be Uncle Zeno's long-lost love. The coincidence doesn't feel necessary, but it doesn't really harm the novel any.
With World War II looming, it feels as if the whole world is living on the "wrong side of the mountain," and before novel's end, Jim's going to have to set off in its shadow. So, a little more drama is probably in order.
But in the end, Earley delivers a rarity: a good story, told without fuss or flourish, and with the assurance of someone who knows what he's doing on every page.
• Yvonne Zipp regularly reviews fiction for the Monitor.
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