Slow Poison
A Novel
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
The witty, dramatic, and fiercely tender story of a Southern family whose prodigious charms are matched only by their propensity for tragedy
"Miss Cade passing." The letter arrives with little fanfare and fewer details, yet the meaning is clear: The Cade family of Covington, Louisiana, has cause to grieve once more.
Called home from her first book tour, author Rory Cade boards a flight from New York to New Orleans. In the next seat, her brother-in-law and former lover Johnny Killelea, now a famous journalist, drinks Scotch and stirs up memories of events long past but never forgotten. As the plane flies south through stormy skies, Rory recalls her family's turbulent history: her mother and stepmother's early deaths; her brilliant and charismatic father's descent into alcoholism; and the romances, heartbreaks, and secrets that shaped her own life and those of her two sisters.
As the tumultuous events of the 1960s unfold, the Cades are pulled apart by their private demons of money, madness, and lust. Exquisitely crafted by one of the South's finest storytellers, Slow Poison is the rich and evocative tale of this star-crossed family's triumphs and misfortunes.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
``To a Southerner, sweet and sad mean the same thing,'' writes Bosworth ( Almost Innocent ), an observation that aptly fits her jilted protagonist, Rory Cade, in love with a man who marries first one of her sisters and then the other, in this family saga rife with alcoholism, insanity, cancer, adultery and traumas related to the war in Vietnam. Set in and around New Orleans, mostly from 1958 to the late '60s, this bittersweet, episodic novel pierces Southern manners and mores with fierce tenderness. Rory's heartthrob, freelance journalist and war correspondent Johnny Killelea, courts ``violence in the name of honor: the Irishman's and the Southerner's constant passion.'' He ricochets from a marriage of convenience to a ``marriage of comfort,'' escaping love. Among Bosworth's memorable characters are Rory's stepmother, reckless belle Aimee Desiree; and Rory's father, Eamon, a charming alcoholic ophthalmologist who sometimes drinks on the job. His plight symbolically echoes Rory's tangled emotions as she sorts through jealousy, pity, rage and affection to see her family and herself with clarity. BOMC alternate.
