Out of the shotgun houses and deep, shaded porches of a West Florida mill town comes this extraordinary novel of love and redemption as told by revisionist historian Gabriel Catts. On the eve of his fortieth birthday Gabe takes his own history in hand in an attempt to reconcile a family shattered by his betrayal of his older brother, Michael. As Gabe contends with a host of personal demons, he recounts his lifelong love for his brother’s wife, Myra—whose own demons threaten to overwhelm all three of them. Circumstance and passion push them all beyond the moral boundaries of their close-knit Baptist community, but it is within the restrictions of their family ties and Southern culture that they rediscover the paths of salvation.
Gabe recalls their childhood lives in the poor neighborhood called Magnolia Hill, when their tranquil days of church picnics and porch gossip were spiked with a tragedy too evil to name. While Gabe escapes to academe in the Northeast, fleeing the poverty and inertia of their mill-town upbringing, Michael remains at home and manages to become an important person in the community. Gabe is drawn home time and again, but the events of his return in the troubled summer of 1974 threaten even years later to rip the family asunder. Through it all, Gabe’s immovable love for Myra serves as the focus of this intimate view of a Southern family.
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