The Hangman's Children:

Having read, and loved, the cult baseball novel, "The Dixie Association" I sought out everything written by Donald Hays - a regrettably meager list from someone who clearly has a vision of life on "the outlaw fringe" of southern America in the 60s and 70s. The characters of The Hangman's Children are a disparate group, led by a sort of Arkansas cowboy- philosopher-conman, who makes his living by staging plays at small town carnivals, based around famous characters of old-west Oklahoma and Arkansas lore including Isaac Parker, the "hangman" of the title. (The highlight of the book is probably that part wholly given over to the speeches of the characters in one of the "Hangman" performances, as Hays reflects through each of them different views of morality, social responsibility, and conscience). The son of the protagonist is a dreamy idealist determined to go to jail to protest the Vietnam War. The son's girlfriend, a wealthy runaway, and a Vietnam vet blasted by drugs and experience provide counterpoint to the father-son debates on responsibility and accountability that pace the book.Tha Hangman's Children is not as successful as the Dixie Association partly because the latter has the parameters of the baseball season to give structure to the plot and narrative. Without such a device, the story tends to assume the anarchy implict in the characters themselves, as they flee the law through the midwest of 1968, ending up in a slightly inconclusively at the Chicago Democratic convention street riots of that year. Each chapter in turn is in the first person words of one of the several main characters, which means a constantly shifting view of what is going on, and, in effect, of what the book is about.Nevertheless, if you love the southern voice and life on the edge insights of Donald Hays, you will stick to the Hangman's Children through its narrative devices and meandering course - just for the pleasure afforded by those passages where it works.Like all fans of the Arkansas Reds, I wish that more had been written by Hays. The world of the Reds bears another visit, and if the author should be alive and happen to read this, I hope he will give us another look at the hardscrabble life he wholly captures in the Dixie Association and partially revives in the Hangman's Children.