Flying Shoes
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Mary Byrd Thornton could understand how a reporter couldn't resist the story: a nine-year-old boy sexually molested and killed on Mother's Day, 1966. A suspect to whom nothing would stick. A neighborhood riddled with secrets. No one, especially the bungling or complicit authorities, had been able to solve the crime. Now, thirty years later, the reporter's call will reel a reluctant Mary Byrd from Mississippi back to Virginia where she must confront her family-and, once again, the murder's irremovable stain of tragedy.
Lisa Howorth's remarkable Flying Shoes is a work of fiction, but the murder is based on the still-unsolved case of her stepbrother, a front page story in the Washington Post. And yet this is not a crime novel; it is an honest and luminous story of a particular time and place in the South, where even calamitous weather can be a character, everyone has a story, and all are inextricably entwined. With a flamboyant cast, splendid dark humor, a potent sense of history, and a shocking true story at its heart, Flying Shoes is a rich and candid novel from a fresh new voice about family and memory and one woman's flight from a wounded past.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Howorth's debut is a character-driven novel about family and friendship. Mississippian Mary Byrd Thornton is an ordinary person with one distinction: 40 years ago, her young stepbrother was murdered, and the killer was never found. One day she receives a call from a detective specializing in cold cases who tells her about new developments in the investigation and asks Mary Byrd to return to Richmond, Va., her childhood home, so her whole family can meet with him together in hopes of achieving "closure." Mary Byrd is a winsome character, and the novel revolves around her, but other characters hold similar charms. Teever Barr is a local quasi-homeless Vietnam vet who bumbles through life, yet manages to land on his feet. Hubard Mann Valentine Jr. is the gay heir to a chicken empire. And Jack Ernest is a rakish ne'er-do-well who has an on-again, off-again relationship with Mary Byrd. Howorth paints her characters with a colorful palette and sketches the details of daily life with a sure hand. The murder case remains in the background throughout most of the novel; the story is decidedly more of a character study than a page-turning thriller, but Howorth's characters are well worth getting to know.
