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Summary
Summary
The year is 1952. Fourteen-year-old Alex Gambier is rebellious by nature and scarred by childhood tragedy in the southern community of Evening Shade. An outcast in his own family, mute from a bout with diphtheria at an early age, Alex expresses himself by writing imaginative stories and by conceiving daredevil stunts that test all of his physical resources while putting his life in extreme danger. The aftermath of one of his hair-raising stunts finds Alex in the care of a young black nurse named Mally Shaw. An unlikely friendship results, which is ended by an unspeakable crime that costs Mally her life. Or not quite ended, for Mally finds herself trapped in a nether world by the force of Alex's will and his need to exact a terrifying revenge on the man responsible for Mally's death. But the revenge he seeks is a two-edged sword, the price Alex's own soul as he recklessly pursues his quarry in a chilling double twist climax that surpasses anything John Farris has written before.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Farris takes a break from the paranormal pyrotechnics of his Fury series (The Fury, etc.) with this well-wrought period tale of vengeance from beyond the grave. It's 1952 in the sultry Tennessee town of Night Shade, and black nurse Mally Shaw has just heard her white patient, Priest Howard, use his dying breath to accuse his slimy son, Leland, of being a thief. Soon thereafter, Leland, who assumes (correctly) that his daddy has entrusted Mally with criminal evidence that could sink his budding political career, abducts Mally to his home, where he rapes and kills her and then covers up the evidence to make her death look accidental. Only days before, though, good-hearted Mally had shown kindness to Alex Gambier, an emotionally troubled mute boy whose brother is the town's deputy sheriff, and her psychic rapport with Alex persists after death. This is a more streamlined story than Farris's usual supernatural extravaganzas, but the plot still has ample room to twist and turn around the complications of Alex's inability to speak and Mally's second-class citizenship in a racially divided town. Solidly developed characters and an authentic sense of period and place contribute to the story's impact, as does the unusual blend of tenderness and grue. Farris remains one of the most effectively surprising horror writers of his generation. (Feb. 15) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Perhaps Farris's best yet shows him, like Dean Koontz in his recent work, striving for greater substance. With all of Farris's magical, down-home western Tennessee details (the story takes place in a richly evoked 1952), readers may initially expect straightforward, mainstream southern fiction like To Kill a Mockingbird. Until they get to passages like this, with similes singing: "And the days of his childhood had run long and playful, the quick nights slept away while his heart held the heat and lure of the sun. Now his days were shorter, shadowed, intolerable; his heart, like the sun, was dying in his breast." This sultry, July-evening anguish belongs to Leland Howard of Evening Shade. Now in the last week of his race for governor, he rapes a widowed young black woman and accidentally causes her death (his hounds tear her to pieces, offstage). The victim is Mally Shaw, a nurse who saved the life of 14-year-old mute Alex Gambier, who likes to test his mettle by lying on the tracks at Cole's Crossing as the Dixie Traveler roars over him. Mally nursed Leland's father, the banker Priest Howard, who died in distrust of his son and left Mally evidence that Leland committed fraud. After her death, Mally's spirit returns one evening at Cole's Crossing and, together with Alex (who witnessed her rape), plans Leland's just rewards. The mute boy can talk aloud only with Mally, and their evenings at the Crossing, where a spirit train picks up the dead, become the eponymous phantom nights. Also on hand is Mally's cultivated father, Dr. Ramses Valjean, who joins with Alex's brother Bobby, Evening Shade's acting sheriff, to track down clues condemning Howard. Strong, lip-smacking suspense with an occult overwash that more or less avoids genre categorization. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Several usually unassociated natives of little Evening Shade, Tennessee, fatefully cross paths one pressure-cooking August 1952 weekend. After his banker father's funeral, U.S. Senate candidate Leland Howard decides to wind down with pretty Mally Shaw, his father's nurse at the end, and winds up raping and killing her. Mute 14-year-old Alex Gambier, whom Mally had befriended after cleaning him up in the wake of a death-defying prank, is a hidden witness, as he lets his brother Bobby, the town's acting sheriff, know. But going after Leland is a major career risk, and Bobby has to be prodded into deeply investigating by Mally's long-estranged father, a pathologist who quickly gathers evidence that shames Bobby into action. Only Alex knows that the justice seekers have a crucial ally--Mally's ghost, whom Alex has kept from fully passing away by the force of his need for trust and revenge. With engaging characters and deft evocation of early 1950s racism, Farris makes a routine, mildly supernaturalized rural police procedural rather better than it could have been. --Ray Olson Copyright 2005 Booklist