Stranger from Home

Book excerpt: In the 1930s, when Cole Worthington returned to his Boggy Depot farm in the flatlands of Oklahoma, he hoped his family would welcome him back. But after he had run away, his son, JT, had taken over to help his Christian mother bring the place to profit. JT had no desire to relinquish the authority he had earned. The son's life was ruled by religion, just as his mother's was, but of another kind: he was in constant battle with a malicious Old Testament God, as well as any human who might dare to challenge him physically. Boggy Depot was a white man's town with blacks at risk if they stayed after dark, but JT was of a mind to change that. Good friends with the family's hired black, he secretly cut down the warning sign and carried it away. .Marrying the banker's lovely daughter was part of his life plan, but that is derailed when, like his father's assumption of authority, the local beauty finds sexual distraction in a visiting evangelist whom she believes she loves. Like Cole, JT runs away, leaving his parents, his sister Susie, and baby brother Bug to cope with a series of natural catastrophes: drought, tornadoes, and finally, rains and flooding. The story has other actors: Dry with his insatiable thirst; the independent old quilter who lives in a pig shed; and the bank teller Gay, with his unfortunate ambition to please Bertie, his spoiled wife, who is also Sary's sister. Bertie has an insatiable desire for a star ruby ring whose disappearance adds to the disaster of its cost. In the end, as the drama unfolds, Bertie gets her comeuppance and Sary and JT their rewards for being steadfastly what they are--Sary, the Handmaiden of the Lord, and JT, the willing battler returned to the fray. A Critic's Review Stranger From Home is a beautifully written novel, and proves conclusively that an epic can be written in fewer than 200 pages. It is a novel to be savored not just for its characters who emerge in the tale as if from the very soil but also for its substance. The key to life in this story is belief, whether it be in God or fate or love, or anything. Cole fails because he is a true cynic; Sary ultimately succeeds oil is found on Worthington land, land Cole once abandoned because, she says, "I had faith." And JT wins, too, because he believed in battle, the necessity of tension in everyday life. He becomes a man. This novel is likely to remain undiscovered for years, but it should be recognized someday as a near-classic novel of the American spirit. Chris Goodrich in The San Francisco Review of Books