Crazy in Alabama

Mark Childress

Whoa! Let me stand back and look at this story again... Take a woman who murders her husband after years of emotional and some physical abuse... Take a 12-year-old white boy caught up in the civil rights movement in 1965 Alabama... Take a mortician in Alabama who is caring for his two orphan newphews... And throw in the Beverly Hillbillies television show... When those elements are all shaken together and put into a book, you have this excellent, poignant novel.

Lucille, the not-so-grieving widow, takes her husband's decapitated head and flees Alabama, pursuing her dream. Her nephew Peejoe is caught up in the tensions of a small town where a black boy is killed during a sit in protest. Dove, her brother, is the white mortician of the town and the county coroner. He also finds himself pulled into the civil rights movement although he prefers to stay clear of the whole conflict.

This book is a balancing act of black humor, outrage at the actions of racists, sadness at deaths of both people and hopes, and the raising of new hopes. The reader is pulled back and forth between Lucille's story and Peejoe's story. The representative story of a civil rights uprising would probably too depressing if told from an adult point of view (especially a black adult) or without Aunt Lucille. Instead, it becomes a novel that shows the atrocities of racism and domestic violence that raises laughter and tears at the same time. I love the end when the adult Peejoe remembers the dangers of saying "no" to Aunt Lucille when she has her mind set on something.

Yes, I liked this book - that is obvious. I highly recommend it for both its comedy and its perception.

Notice: Strong sexual content