by Jenny Wingfield

I could tell I’d got a rattling good tale in my hands because everything around me faded to insignificance. My sons came and went and I occasionally fed them. The dogs hung around me and once or twice I shoo’d them out into the garden. I think someone rang the doorbell, to no avail. All in all, my present day existence became a meld of muffled off stage sounds: stage centre being the Moses’ place, Columbia County, Arkansas 1956.

The double whammy that Jenny Wingfield delivers in this, her debut novel, is the aforementioned rattling good story plus a whole bunch of characters so well drawn that they quickly become real people in your mind. Before you know it you are loving them – or hating them – with an intensity normally reserved for your very own, real life, kith and kin. And then, because you love ‘em (or hate ‘em) so much, you really, desperately, intensely, imperatively, need to know their fate. 

The third triumph – the triple whammy – is Wingfield’s ability to bring 1950’s southern county America to life. Her use of language is masterful: snippets of dialect, turns of phrase, dialogue and description all work together to root the story in both era and setting. She blends the God-fearing family rhythms of ritual with the cussing, wild, drunken cowboy imagery to perfection and depicts the moral confusion of the era therein (the God-fearing occasionally turning to drink, the outlaws sometimes seeking God) with great perception.

Despite never having visited Arkansas in the 1950’s, in spirit I was right there, immersed, part of the Moses and Lake family, living and breathing their lives, sharing their joys and their tragedies. I predict a film version, yet dread watching it, lest it trample on the vivid imagery Wingfield has etched into my mind and silence the southern drawl playing out in my head.

©Julia Welstead 2011