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Edgar Winner Phillip DePoy's New Novel:
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| a master southern story teller KIRKUS REVIEWS |
REVIEWS:
A folklorist is accused of murder.
Fever Devilin, who retreated to the Georgia mountains when his
university shut down his Department of Folklore, is at loose ends. His
fiance's out of town, and he has no research project in the works. When
wealthy Atlantan Carl Schultz calls and asks his help in establishing
the provenance of a silver medallion his father bought from a mountain
widow 20 years ago, Fever invites him up to his cabin and promptly
identifies the coin as depicting the fabled St. Elian at the well in
Wales. What's the connection between the medallion and the other two
items Schultz's father bought at that auction-a portrait by a
19th-century landscape artist, and a Cherokee artifact-with Fever's
family tree? Fever and his friend, Shakespearean professor Winton
Andrews, soon must deal with a corpse in Fever's living room, a shady
lawyer trying to dupe them, a lunatic whacking heads with a cricket bat
and a ghostly wraith in an aubergine dress wafting through the Barnsley
Gardens. The clues stretch from Welsh silver mines to an Appalachian
mansion to the Trail of Tears left by the Cherokees as they were
displaced from Georgia to Oklahoma.
An intricately nuanced transgenerational saga rendered with the panache
of a master southern storyteller. DePoy (A Minister's Ghost, 2005, etc.)
clearly loves southern cooking, southern mountain folk and the wryly
acerbic sniping of best friends.
Kirkus
Reviews
Welsh legends, ghosts, a Cherokee artifact, a valuable portrait all combine in unexpected but ingenious ways in Shamus-finalist
DePoy's fourth Fever Devilin mystery (after 2005's A Minister's Ghost), set in the Georgia Appalachians. In past adventures,
the folklorist and failed academic has helped Sheriff Skidmore investigate murders involving strangers, but this time trouble
directly involves Fever's family and heritage, which makes it worse for him and better for the reader. A phone call about
an unusual silver medallion purchased from someone in the town of Blue Mountain prompts Fever to invite the caller to visit.
When the caller ends up dead in Fever's cabin, Fever has no choice but to untangle the twisted origins of the medallion even
when it leads deep into his own family's somewhat sordid past. Adept at clever word play, DePoy has a comfortable command
of his characters, their land and their history. (July)
Publisher's Weekly
Best Recent Letter:
Your books are wonderful. They are like constructions, large and sheltering, and full of hidden mysteries and shadows,
yet, on closer examination, every piece, every nail and screw and brick, is perfect art in itself. When I read in The Minister's
Ghost that phrase I never thought I would read again, "stockinged feet", I was breathless. I had thought that no
one in the universe would ever add that so critical "ed" again. Stocking feet always sets my nerves on edge. Thank
you for stories that are thoughtful as well as thought provoking. I am bound by love to southern California, so besides being
wonderful literature, your books give me a sense of seasons that I have lost. Sometimes only your vision of a November sky
can get me through another autumn in "paradise."Please keep writing. Words have become such a cheap commodity in
this world that we need artists like you who can use them well.
Sincerely,
Ann Skains
THE WIDOW OF THE SWANS, a Welsh story.
On Glasfryn lake, in the parish of Llangybi, is a place called Grace's Well. In the days before history it was a fairy
well, guarded by Grace, a fairy who had taken human form because she fell in love with a man. She was a tall woman with large,
bright eyes, dressed all in white silk. She waited by the water every night for her love to come walking. Her only fairy duty
was to cover the well when it wasn't in use. One night she was distracted by the beauty of swans on the lake, and watched
them glide over the black water, and did not realize that her love had drawn from the well to bring her a drink. Grace and
the man walked along the lake's edge while water poured out of the well. Next morning the man was gone and the well had flooded
the fairies' dancing ring. When Grace saw the destruction her neglect had caused, she was overcome with guilt and paced back
and forth weeping and moaning. The fairies punished her by changing her into a swan. Every night after that, for many months,
her love would come to the lake and call her name. Every night the man was approached by a pale swan with large, bright eyes,
but he looked away, longing for Grace--never realizing she was the swan. Eventually the man ceased his visits. Grace lived
as a swan on that lake for a hundred years before she was allowed to resume human form. When she became a woman again, she
was forbidden to enter the fairy kingdom. She went looking for her love, but all she found were his great grandchildren, so
she went back to the lake and lived on as a swan. But on certain nights of the year a tall woman with large, bright eyes,
dressed all in white silk, may be seen wandering up and down the high ground around the lake, weeping.
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