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Eden
By Olympia Vernon
GroveAtlantic Press
A fearless and wildly
original debut, a powerhouse of a novel that explodes on the first page and
sustains a tightrope intensity until the last
When fourteen-year-old Maddy Dangerfield draws a naked woman on the pages of
Genesis in fire-engine-red lipstick during Sunday school, the rural black
community of Pyke County, Mississippi, is scandalized. Her mother, mortified
by the small-town gossip and determined to teach Maddy the perils of her
youthful intelligence, forces her from then on to spend weekends caring for
her estranged Aunt Pip, an outcast who lives on the wrong side of town and
is dying of cancer. The lessons Maddy learns are ones that could not be
taught in any church.
Shuttling between the home she shares with her parents—endlessly locked in a
cycle of resentment, violence, and only sporadic tenderness—and the house of
tough, strong-minded Aunt Pip out on Commitment Road, Maddy feels her eyes
gradually opening to the complicated dynamics that inform her world. As the
once self-possessed, fiery Pip wastes away in body and spirit, Maddy is
forced to confront the brutal finality of death and to contend with the
ghosts that hover over Pyke County—the violated body of Laurel Pillar, a
young white girl raped in the field years before; Uncle Sugar, the black man
said to have Laurel’s blood on his hands, in prison for life; Justice Bates,
Sugar’s alleged accomplice, his broken body strung up and hanging from a
tree; and the community of dead and dying women who have been ravaged by
disease, in whom Maddy finds a terrible sort of comfort.
In lush, vivid brush strokes, Olympia Vernon conjures a world that is both
intoxicating and cruel, and illuminates the bittersweet transformation of
the young girl who must bear the burden and blessing of its secrets too
soon. Eden is a haunting, memorable novel propelled by the poetry and
power of a voice that is complex, lyrical, and utterly true.
Olympia Vernon grew up in a small town on the border of Mississippi and
Louisiana, the fourth of seven children. She has a degree in criminal
justice and received her MFA from Louisiana State University in the spring
of 2002. Olympia has twice been granted the Matt Clark Memorial Scholarship
and was nominated for the Robert O. Butler Award in Fiction in 2000.
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