After young Memory Feather\u2019s father runs off with a \u201cFrench hussy\u201d and leaves her and her mother, Virginia, nearly destitute in New Mexico, they reluctantly move to Virginia\u2019s hometown of Belle Cote, Mississippi. Virginia detests the town\u2019s bigotry and insular attitudes, and she dreads being dependent on her loving but judgmental parents, but it\u2019s 1953 and single mothers have few good options. Memory, who narrates the novel retrospectively, was born with a withered hand with only three fingers, and she fears being shunned for it. But Belle Cote has one big attraction: Virginia\u2019s lifelong best friend, Mac. Today, Memory tells us, \u201cwe would simply call Mac McFadden gay, one of the countless gay men who flourish in small southern communities.\u201d In 1953, Mac is tolerated\u2014as long as he doesn\u2019t go too far. His boundless charm and the popular art and antique shop he runs help offset the clucks over the raucous parties he hosts in his big, lovely house. Virginia and Memory happily move in with him and, for a while, things are good. Memory is taken by a portrait in Mac\u2019s house, a painting of an arrestingly handsome man he calls his \u201cbeautiful dreamer.\u201d Then the man seems to step out of the frame and show up at the front door. Attacks on gay people as well as violence against civil rights activists haunt the story, but the biggest threat to the trio of Memory, Virginia, and Mac is the beautiful Tony Amato. Mac is thrilled by his return. Memory knows Mac has what the town derisively calls \u201chouse boys,\u201d but she is fuzzy on what that means. She\u2019s even more puzzled when her mother and Tony begin to flirt. Memory tells us she\u2019s always had the ability to understand the speech of animals, and Mac\u2019s huge black cat, Minerva, keeps telling her, \u201cThings are going to get much worse.\u201d Minerva is right. Belle Cote and its Gulf of Mexico locale are richly evoked, as is New Orleans, and the author handles suspense deftly. Memory\u2019s witty voice moves convincingly between a child\u2019s innocence and a teenager\u2019s dawning awareness\u2014sometimes exhilarating, sometimes terrifying\u2014of adulthood.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After young Memory Feather\u2019s father runs off with a \u201cFrench hussy\u201d and leaves her and her mother, Virginia, nearly destitute in New Mexico, they reluctantly move to Virginia\u2019s hometown of Belle Cote, Mississippi. Virginia detests the town\u2019s bigotry and insular attitudes, and she dreads being dependent on her loving but judgmental parents, but it\u2019s 1953 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}