(Harper Perennial, $ 26.99)
I have a weakness for books set in the American South so dove into The Queen of Palmyra expecting something along the lines of one of my all-time favourites, The Secret Life of Bees.
Both novels are seen through the eyes of lonely young white girls growing up in the South in the turbulent 1960s, when the racial gap was beginning to close albeit with much violence and discord.
In The Secret Life of Bees, teenage Lily does a runner with her African American maid, hiding from her cruel father with a family of eccentric beekeeping sisters. It’s a heartbreaking but ultimately charming story.
The Queen of Palmyra, however, stays more on the side of heartbreak. Florence Forrest is trying to hold her small world together despite the fact her mother is pretty much full time on the hooch and her father keeps a special cloak and mask hidden in a box.
It seems no one has much time for Florence except Zenie, her grandmother’s African American maid and even then Zenie is far from enthusiastic about having to mind the silly white girl, especially when everyone knows her daddy is Ku Klux Klan.
Minrose Gwin is such a beautiful writer, I couldn’t put this book down, even though at times it made truly harrowing reading and not just because of the murder and mayhem being committed by the bigots of the time. What broke my heart more than anything was the sad story of Florence herself.
As her mother disappears further into her bottles of bootleg and then, finally, just plain disappears, Florence is left with only her father. Saying that this is far from ideal would be the understatement of the year. I loved the language of this endearing book but can’t honestly say that it’s an uplifting read.
In fact, at one point I felt despair for the future of the human race until I realised that we are the future human race, so I guess we made it. Definitely worth reading.
