How Far She Went

Set in rural Georgia, the stories in this collection are painted with a backdrop of Southern charm and hospitality. The quintessential, Georgian pastoral glimmers at the forefront. What lies behind that veil is rural mediocrity—the loneliness, alienation, sadness, and loss that some characters attempt not to see, while others attempt to escape.

Warm breezes stir the maple trees in “Lonesome Road Blues,” only to reveal a widow resigned to the notion that loneliness is inescapable, even with another at one’s side. The story highlights loneliness as its own form of nostalgia, something accepted, sought, and endured. The “Solomon’s Seal” protagonist plants a country Eden of strawberries, corn, tomatoes, and melons, but she is bitter and alone, suffering 40 years in failed marriage, until her husband asks for a divorce because he thinks she killed his dogs. The natural beauty of her garden, however, stems from her loneliness. The lonelier she feels, the more her garden grows. The one plant that refuses to grow, ironically, is the one that could make her somewhat happy—the Solomon Seal.

In “A Man Among Men,” dogs, deer, and blue-tailed roosters roam freely by the creek on the outskirts of town. The township goes about its business while in the backdrop lies the corpse of a man—a man who relegated himself to wither away after his beloved dog and only hope for companionship died. Meanwhile, watermelons, beech trees, mint, and geranium pollinate the backdrop of “A Country Girl,” offering the perfect façade for a young girl in complacent denial, resigned to continue the cycle of the token, picture-perfect country life.

In “How Far She Went,” the same girl who collects the Queen Anne’s lace blooming in the gardens brings death home. Her grandmother kills her cherished and loyal dog to save that girl—more out of acceptance that her granddaughter is her symbolic punishment than out of love. A country-style, roadside café brings a brief moment of solace for the fugitive in “Doing This, Saying That, to Applause”; he eats a gingerbread cookie there just before his arrest and suicide by hanging. Fields of primrose and wild blueberries linger in the backdrop of “Manly Conclusions,” but behind the toolshed lies the family dog—shot point-blank by a friendly, country neighbor. The pastoral here also hides a tradition of toxic masculinity, a toxicity accepted as a birthright and passed down to sons, a birthright that, ironically, adds to the violence of the shot dog when the dog’s owner’s son seeks out vengeance.

The protagonist of “Hindsight” falls in love in what seems like an old-fashioned, small town, boy-meets-girl romance. Months later, she is tortured not only by her husband, but by the small-town opinion that she needs to fix herself so that he stops the abuse. The township of “Inexorable Progress” is a bastion of Southern, country-club life—yet so meaningless and unbearable for Angelina that she attempts suicide to end her struggle to continue living when her dog JoJo dies.

In their conclusions, the stories ultimately leave open the question of whether the trap of self-deception has been escaped. The characters may deceive themselves, just as the stories themselves are deceptively wrapped in representations of pastoral, scenic images. Most of these characters, however, rot from the inside, from loneliness and loss.