Loving the Dead and Gone
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In this “ bittersweet fantastical “ must-read debut (Publishers Weekly) a freak car crash in 1960s rural North Carolina puts in motion moments of grace that bring redemption to two generations of women and the lives they touch. “ There's more than one aching heart in this excellent story exploring the generational effects of love, loss, betrayal, and redemption.” — Southern Literary Review, September Read of the MonthFor forty years Aurilla Cutter has tended a clutch of secrets that have turned her mean. A fatal accident becomes the catalyst for the release of the passions, needs, and hurts in everyone affected by her hidden past. Darlene, a seventeen-year-old widow, struggles to reconnect with her dead husband while proving herself alive. Soon loss and death work their magic, drawing Darlene into an unlikely affair that threatens to upend Aurilla's family, and sets loose Aurilla's own memories of longing and infidelity.Loving the Dead and Gone is a lyrical novel that explores how both grief and love are the ties that bind.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Turner-Yamamoto's bittersweet fantastical debut involves the parallel stories of two grieving women. In 1963 Donald Ray Spencer, 19, dies in a car accident in Clear Creek, N.C. The author then flashes back to 1925 Clear Creek when Aurilla Cutter, at 22, meets tobacco farmer Joe Cutter. Aurilla's marriage to Joe is just one of many choices she regrets, including not running away with Joe's youngest brother, Hank, as well as her seeming inability to love her daughter, Berta Mae. Berta Mae marries Clayton Bishop, first to arrive at the site of Donald Ray's crash during a fishing trip. Clayton begins an affair with Donald Ray's young widow Darlene, 17, who believes Donald Ray's spirit is still alive. Though it can be hard to follow the large cast of interrelated characters, their connections eventually come to light with surprising revelations. Turner-Yamamoto does a good job developing parallels between Darlene's and Aurilla's lives, as both women refuse to let go of their dead lovers and continue to be haunted by their ghosts. As Aurilla says near the end, "Loving the dead and gone was the sweetest love of all." Reading this story is almost as delectable.
