Liar's Bench
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
In this coming-of-age novel, a white, small-town Kentucky teen uncovers dark secrets while investigating her mother’s suspicious death in 1972.
In 1972, on Mudas Summers’s seventeenth birthday, her beloved Mama, Ella, is found hanging from the rafters of their home. Most people in Peckinpaw, Kentucky, assume that Ella’s no-good husband did the deed. Others think Ella grew tired of his abuse and did it herself. Muddy is determined to find out for sure either way, especially once she finds strange papers hidden amongst her mama’s possessions.
But Peckinpaw keeps its secrets buried deep. Muddy’s almost-more-than-friend, Bobby Marshall, knows that better than most. Though he passes for white, one of his ancestors was Frannie Crow, a slave hanged a century ago on nearby Hark Hill Plantation. Adorning the town square is a seat built from Frannie’s gallows. A tribute, a relic—and a caution—it’s known as Liar’s Bench. Now, the answers Muddy seeks soon lead back to Hark Hill, to hatred and corruption that have echoed through the years—and lies she must be brave enough to confront at last.
“Glorious… Liar’s Bench succeeds on many levels…. Much of any reader’s delight will be rooted in savoring the sounds, smells, tastes, and fragrances that enhance her captivating vision of a typical Southern small town during two linked periods of its history.”—Southern Literary Review
“This has southern small-town charm… includes recipes and discussion questions and may appeal to those who like Rebecca Wells or Jennifer Chiaverini.”—Booklist
“A satisfying mystery with thought-provoking historical elements, written in a sassy Southern voice.”—Historical Novels Review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Richardson, author of the memoir The Unbreakable Child, misses the target with this over-the-top debut novel, which details how a girl spends the days shortly after her 17th birthday searching for the truth about her mother's suspicious death. In a small Kentucky town in the early '70s, Mudas "Muddy" Summers is convinced that her long-suffering mother, Ella, didn't take her own life. When Ella's abusive boyfriend, Tommy Whitlock, turns up dead himself, Muddy homes in on villain Roy McGee, whom Muddy caught in an argument with her mom on the day she died. Meanwhile, racial tensions run high as a bigoted older white man, Harper, antagonizes Muddy's mixed-race beau, Bobby Marshall. Though Muddy isn't aware of it, folks seem to know that Bobby is descended from a slave who was hanged from gallows that were later made into the town's titular liar's bench. Richardson's flimsy plot hinges on plenty of convenient coincidences that strain belief. Her characterizations are flat and one-note, with baddies often descending into cartoonish hyperbole. The romance between Muddy and Bobby also falls flat, as Richardson attempts to squeeze a love story into an already disjointed narrative. Despite the book's faults, Richardson manages to put together a chilling view of race relations in the South. Sadly, this isn't enough to sustain this unsuccessful novel.
