Each week as part of SunLit — The Sun’s literature section — we feature staff recommendations from book stores across Colorado. This week, the staff from Park Hill Community Bookstore in Denver recommends a critique of racial hypocrisy, a Dickensian riff on Appalachia and a murder mystery that takes aim at racism.
Beetlecreek
By William Demby; Afterword by James C. Hall
Banner Books – University of Mississippi Press
List price depends on seller; PHCB Price: $3 PB/$5 HC if available
January 1950
Purchase: In store only
From the publisher: After several years of silence and seclusion in Beetlecreek’s black quarter, a carnival worker named Bill Trapp befriends Johnny Johnson, a Pittsburgh teenager living with relatives in Beetlecreek. Bill is white. Johnny is black. Both are searching for acceptance, something that will give meaning to their lives. Bill tries to find it through good will in the community. Johnny finds it in the Nightriders, a local gang. David Diggs, the boy’s dispirited uncle, aspires to be an artist but has to settle for sign painting.
First published in 1950, “Beetlecreek” stands as a moving condemnation of provincialism and fundamentalism. Both a critique of racial hypocrisy and a new direction for the African American novel, it occupies fresh territory that is neither the ghetto realism of Richard Wright nor the ironic modernism of Ralph Ellison. Even after 50 years, more or less, William Demby said in 1998, “It still seems to me that ‘Beetlecreek’ is about the absence of symmetry in human affairs, the imperfectability of justice the tragic inevitability of mankind’s inhumanity to mankind.”
From Sheryl Hartmann, volunteer: A quick read but not a shallow one. There are some aspects of racial issues in the book but I found its message to be about loneliness, internal isolation, and the struggle to find meaning. There’s also an element of turning a perceived wrong into a weapon and excuse for self-rightousness. I liked most all the characters despite their flaws and felt an emotional connection with Bill, Johnny, and David.
Demon Copperhead
By Barbara Kingsolver
Harper
List price depends on seller; PHCB Price: $3 PB/$5 HC if available
October 2022
Purchase: In store only
From the publisher: Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenage single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.
Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote “David Copperfield” from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. “Demon Copperhead” speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.
From Babette McQueen, volunteer: This book was a bit challenging to read at the beginning as it is told in Demon’s “voice,” which, while not technically dialect, did not flow for me at the start. But don’t give up! Once I began to “hear” his voice, and it started to flow, I read it seamlessly and enthusiastically. It isn’t just about the perils of institutional poverty, but touches on so many other topics, and does so in an un-preachy, natural, captivating story-telling kind of way. In addition to being simply a well-written book that highlights aspects of our culture that need to be brought out into the spotlight.
I highly recommend this book to all sorts of readers. If a mark of a good book is one that stays with you for a long time after you put it down, this one shines in that category in so many ways!
The Trees
By Percival Everett
Graywolf
Prices vary by seller; PHCB Price: $3 PB/$5 HC if available
September 2021
Purchase: In store only
From the publisher: Percival Everett’s novel is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till.
The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot. As the bodies pile up, the MBI detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried. In this bold, provocative book, Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, and does so in a fast-paced style that ensures the reader can’t look away. “The Trees” is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance from an author with his finger on America’s pulse.
From Sheryl Hartmann, volunteer: Hilarious and gruesome at the same time. The names of the characters are little “laugh packets.” Some of the characters made me think back to the “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” TV series from 2012. A very satisfying revenge tale that flips the Aunt Jemima/blackface trope upside down. Percival Everett has written about 30 books and I just might have to read all of them!
THIS WEEK’S BOOK RECS COME FROM:
Park Hill Community Bookstore
4620 E 23rd Ave, Denver
(303) 355-8508
As part of The Colorado Sun’s literature section — SunLit — we’re featuring staff picks from book stores across the state. Read more.