Chasing Fireflies by Charles Martin

About the book: They have one summer to find what was lost long ago. "Never settle for less than the truth," she told him. But when you don't even know your real name, the truth gets a little complicated. It can nestle so close to home it's hard to see. It can even flourish inside a lie. And as Chase Walker discovered, learning the truth about who you are can be as elusive--and as magical--as chasing fireflies on a summer night. A haunting story about fishing, baseball, home cooking, and other matters of life and death.
First line: I stepped out into the sunlight humming a Pat Green tune, slipping on my sunglasses, and stared out over the courthouse steps.

My Thoughts: This 2008 Christy Award winner is the first Charles Martin novel I have read and I found that I liked. I will read more by this author. The parallel stories of a six year old abandoned boy, and that of Chase, who had been taken in as a young boy by Unc, and that of Tommy, Chase's cousin, are told intertwined with the digging out of family secrets that Chase is determined to bring to light. It is a beautifully written story of a father and son, of love of family, of sacrificial love. The sense of place is great. It jumped back and forth between the past and present but was easy to keep up with. The character of Unc was so well drawn and was such a wonderful person. One part of the book I just couldn't understand, a small part to be sure, had to do with an action Unc took. It was just so...un-Unc like. It is a spoiler so can't say here what it is but if you read this book you'll find it. I would suggest this novel to anyone, it was sad and sweet and ultimately satisfying. Just keep your tissues near to hand.

Rating:



Quote: "Inside you is a thing worth putting on a pedestal--worth putting out there for all the world to see. That piece of rock might been knocked around, roughed up a bit, considered scrap, and thrown on the trash pile...but that's only because they don't know what's on the inside. They can't see like Michaelangelo. 'Cause if they could, they'd know that there's something in there that's just waiting to jump out. Like there is inside you. I'm sorry for the hammer and chisel. I wish life didn't work that way. Just remember...the velvet cloth ain't far behind."

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Charles Martin

Why Beulah Shot Her Pistol Inside the Baptist Church by Clayton Sullivan

From the Book Jacket:Raised in the Primitive Baptist Church, teenage Beulah Buchanan marries the much older deacon Ralph Rainey to escape from her oppressive parents, thus jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
Over the next six years, Beulah works in her domineering husband’s cafe and cooks him dinner at home every night, dutifully attends church, and lets herself be led into an affair with the preacher. When she embarrasses her husband by not cooking enough food for the ravenous visiting revival preacher, Ralph “chastises” Beulah with his belt. When he tries to beat her again, she fights back and locks him in the cooler at his cafe.
Why Beulah Shot Her Pistol Inside the Baptist Church is a new take on the Southern Gothic tragedy, told in Beulah’s innocently hilarious voice. Beulah evokes the Southern women of Clyde Edgerton’s Raney and Mark Childress’s Crazy in Alabama, but is a totally original and winning character, a young woman breaking free.

Quote from the book: By five o'clock I was back in the kitchen cookin' full speed ahead. I was cookin' like I was Betty Crocker. I knew the preachers would turn up at the house at six o'clock.

My thoughts: The title of this book made me laugh so I checked the blurb and bought it. I've chosen to read more than one book just because of the title. I was prepared to like this book and was looking forward to reading it, I wanted to know just WHY did Beulah even have a pistol at the Baptist church. I really do like reading southern literature.

Beulah tells her story in first person to the reader. At times she is funny, sometimes darkly so. She tells the story of her life in rural Mississippi, marriage to an older man, domestic violence, and hypocrisy in her church. She was a sympathetic character, a 16 year old in a loveless marriage being used and abused. She should have listened to her mother. Her life with Ralph was nothing but misery as her mother had predicted. For six years Beulah works for and serves her cold hypocrite of a husband. Then the preacher starts calling, after Ralph is gone to work. He cons her as surly as Ralph did with the sweet words she craves. It breaks her heart to finally learn this.

Since she was raised in the church, and the author is a retired minister, I did not expect her language to be so very crude. Yikes. It was way out of character for an overprotected church girl. The constant repetition, (Beulah kept saying the same thing 3 or 4 different ways) was annoying. It was strange that she could repeat the F word and the P word without hesitation them apologize for saying hell. Go figure.

I don't know whether to recommend this or not. I liked the story but the language really put me off.

Hardcover: 238 pages
Publisher: NewSouth (October 30, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1588381676
ISBN-13: 978-1588381675