Perdido River Bastard

"The country road to hell and back is paved with the good intentions and secrets of Southern women." Prodigal son Duddy Doogan has a promise to keep. He is going home, to a place where his eccentric storytelling kin await his first visit since his father went missing. Home to where a powerful river carves an age-old border between Florida and Alabama. Home to a family tree of hidden secrets, lies, memories, and skin colors-but there is nothing black and white about the mysteries buried in its roots. Haunted by the trauma of a terrifying childhood accident and the love of too many Southern women, Duddy must excavate the bones of his family history to put his own broken life back together. When tragedy suddenly strikes, a promise to return home becomes a dangerous quest to reclaim his father's remains from a long-lost psychotic uncle living deep in the Alabama swampland. For Duddy Doogan, a journey into the heart of darkness will lead him to a shattering revelation about his own past, a secret truth hiding in plain sight and powerful enough to alter the course of Perdido River history for generations to come. Note from the Author: I'm excited about my Southern fiction novel, Perdido River Bastard, a multi-generational, romantic mystery about myth and sin, memory and history, secrets and lies, family life and death, magic and illusion, rebirth and redemption, good and evil-the sublime beauty I call the Deep South. Inherent themes of race, prejudice, and bigotry kinda go with the territory, but this novel isn't about inciting revolution or calling for imposed societal atonement for past transgressions. It isn't about blaming others for things they can't possibly help, like the color of skin, the sins of fathers and mothers, or the broken pasts of their children. Simply put, this story is about finding love through forgiveness, a notion worthy of discussion to my mind, as it seems to be the one that people conveniently forget, easily ignore, and readily dismiss for being too quaint, too simple, or too idealistic. Personally, I think we all could use a little idealism in these current racially divisive times. What we're doing right now isn't working well for any of us, so my novel suggests a wholly different tactic to affect change, one espoused by few truly Great Leaders, one being a preacher from Alabama who died for a simple dream that has yet to come true. This novel is close kin to other kinds of Southern fiction I've enjoyed reading over the years - a completed jigsaw puzzle that's more than the sum of its parts. It's a fictional biography, a romance, a series of vignettes, an interracial love story, a son's quest to make peace with his missing father, and a cozy mystery about generations of powerful women, contemporary and otherwise, who haunt one man's life. GOODREADS tags: contemporary women, cozy mystery, family saga, literary romance, magic realism, multi-generational, multicultural, mystery-thriller-suspense, plot twist, quirky characters, race issues, romance, southern biography, women's fiction