Pawpaw Patch

Or maybe I should say about race in America -- not simply the South. I read this book over a year ago and it still remains in my mind -- which indicates how powerful this book is. I started thinking again about this book because I have been reading "The Secret Life of Bees." The "Bees" book got me thinking, because it is so flawed with stereotyped characters and superficial view of race in the South. I found myself thinking about books I have read about race in the South and thought of at least two that are so much better (aside from To Kill a Mockingbird). One of these was "The Summer We Got Saved" and the other was this book. Either is so much better (but much less well known) than the bees book is. No stereotypes in this book -- no abusive men, abused orphans, wise black women, etc. Instead, we get a believable story about a working class white woman living in a small town in south Georgia (same town she's lived in all her life) who one day finds herself shunned by everyone she knows. Her beauty shop business dries up overnight, and she is told that she is unwelcome at her church. She has no idea why, but it has to do with race, as she eventually finds out. The crisis of her shunning and the resulting social and economic suffering move her painfully in the journey from being comfortable but without much depth or understanding, to going through the wilderness of shunning, to emerge having been changed for the better -- she understands so much more about others and herself. She goes from fitting in to someone who has changed so much she will never really fit in again, even when things get better. Her eyes have been opened. This life-saving growth in insight is where I would compare the book to "The Summer We Got Saved." Although I have been trying not to accumulate books -- to pass them on after I have read them -- this book will remain in my collection and will be re-read from time to time.

No wonder I haven't been getting royalties on this book! Well, it could be revived soon; Arena Stage Theater, in D.C. is in the process of adapting it for stage. So, there! Author, Janice Daugharty

It's a shame that writers as gifted as Janice Daugharty don't get more attention. While the big publishing Goliaths spend millions promoting name-brand authors who churn out formulaic clap-trap, someone in New York should have the courage to do what it takes to introduce this superb writer to a broader reading public. Each line of Pawpaw Patch is a well-placed stroke of the pen which paints a vivid, colorful portrait of the very human citizens of Cornerville, Georgia. No writer has come closer to the truth.

Janice Daugharty's book jacket photo shows a middle-aged woman seated in a white wicker chair, wearing a prim, sailor-collared dress. If one were to judge by appearances only, one might expect stories about quilting bees and square dancers. Well, there is dancing in "Pawpaw Patch," but it's clogging, not square-dancing. And there are beauty pageants, and "mothers in corn-smudged frocks" and folks trading pickles for legal advice. However quaint this may seem, there is nothing cute about Cornerville, where Chanell Foster's beauty shop is the center of social activity. This is a seemingly modern town where people dress in Ralph Lauren and watch "Knot's Landing," but continue to call blacks "Negroes." Chanell and her customers are just one step removed from separate drinking fountains. When one of her childhood friends starts a vicious, racist rumor, driving her business away, Chanell is forced to confront her own prejudices and, later, those of the townspeople who have turned against her. Daugharty tells this twist-filled tale in a voice that is as rich as mississippi mud pie. Every few paragraphs I found myself pausing to savor a particularly apt image - "cup handle ears," peacock tail feathers "sweeping the corn rows like the tulle train of a wedding gown." She also has a wonderful ear for dialogue and a genius for naming - to wit, Aunt Teat, Joy Beth and Linda Gay. Swanoochee County, the setting of Daugharty's two previous novels as well as this one, isn't paradise - not by a long shot - but it's a place readers will want to visit again and again