Earl in the Yellow Shirt: Novel, A [Paperback]

Janice Daugharty (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 11, 1998

From a new literary star and acclaimed author of Pawpaw Patch, Necessary Lies and Dark of the Moon comes the haunting and poignant novel of a family in crisis, set in the backwoods of Georgia.

Meet the Scurvy family, an impoverished clan who are the scourge of their small white-trash community. Mother has died in childbirth, leaving behind her newborn and four uneducated children. Father, a toothless and slothful man, cannot muster the money for her funeral. Their 15-year-old daughter, the only girl among three brothers, realizes that the newborn infant is now hers to raise; something that will finally put meaning into her life. And the brothers find themselves enlisted by the town's corrupt bigwig to run moonshine -- a risky venture, but the only way they'll be able to earn the money to bury their mother.

Written in a powerful voice unique to Daugharty, Earl in the Yellow Shirt is narrated in alternating chapters by each of the main characters, their voices corning to the story with different nuances of hope and despair. It is a compelling work that solidifies Daugharty's versatile storytelling talents.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Reminiscent of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Earl in the Yellow Shirt follows the efforts of the aptly named Scurvy family--a dirt-poor south Georgia clan--to raise enough money for a decent funeral for their mother, who died giving birth. Told from multiple points of view--including that of daughter Loujean, who, at age 16, becomes the baby's caretaker--Earl in the Yellow Shirt perfectly captures the cadence and dialect of Southern life and language. Like the best writing, the novel is thickly textured but reads lightly. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

"Sister Louella preached her own funeral while she was living," writes Daugharty (The Paw-Paw Patch, LJ 4/15/96) of matriarch Louella Lay, who lived according to Christian precepts that viewed death as a reprieve from the drudgery of a woman's existence in 1960s rural south Georgia. Daugharty's brilliant fourth novel, which recalls Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, shows that there is good and evil in every family. The family, four nearly grown children and the "Old Man," must devise ways to pay to have "Mama buried proper." The boys trade with the devil while their sister, Loujean, tends to the newborn their mother lost her life delivering. The one strong and clear hope is Earl, the good-hearted boy who pines for Loujean and goes against his nature to earn some fast money and help the family. If you loved Faulkner's tale, you will enjoy Daugharty's clear and simple view of family struggle. Highly recommended for public libraries.?Shannon Haddock, Bellsouth Corp. Lib. & Business Research Ctr., Birmingham, Ala.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (March 11, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060928980
• ISBN-13: 978-0060928988
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,321,875 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

See www.janicedaugharty.com for sample writings and more on me.

One morning, I expect to wake up to breakfast in bed--served by Amazon/Kindle. They do everything else for authors with more and more happening all the time.

I've been writing for about thirty years but publishing only about twenty years. Slow starter, that's me! Now, in my later years, I find myself having to ostensibly start over: I'm trying to find my way in a virtual publishing world, after so many years of print publishing only. If I thought my little place was isolated before, it's even more isolated now that I'm tied to my computer. I like it though, very much. I especailly like the freedom of quick, uncomplicated publishing through Kindle on Amazon. Compare having to mail copies of manuscripts to an agent, waiting, waiting, waiting for her to get back to me, then waiting again for some editor to accept or reject one of my novels, so on and so forth. You get the picture. Lately I've been clicking on to the digital platform and uploading precious manuscripts--most written during those other long waits--that I thought I'd never see in print.

Thankfully, I now have a print publisher too--Belle Bridge Books--who has done an amazing job with my last two novels. Both best-sellers in the Kindle Store! The titles are "The Little Known" and "Heir To The Everlasting." We're hoping soon to add the prequel to "Heir..." in ebook format. My e-novel,"A Righteous Wind," is briefly posted for free on Kindle, with almost 15,000 downloads in the US alone (for more titles by Janice Daugharty, see my author's page--almost 100 novels, short stories and essays to pick from).

I write a lot; I write too much, maybe. But now I'm glad I've spent all those hours writing. I'm an excellent typist too.

See my old typewriter with a spool ribbon I used to have to manually re-ink at Valdosta State University archives, Odum Library. Love my fans, Janice Daugharty, writer in residence at Abraham Baldwin Agriculture College, in Tifton, Georgia

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Earl in the Yellow Shirt, November 11, 2011

By 

S. Warfield (Maryland) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Earl in the Yellow Shirt (Kindle Edition)

Earl had two shirts. One was brown plaid and the other a light yellow. The brown shirt he wore everyday and usually when working, and the yellow shirt he saved for visiting and courting Loujean, the only daughter in the Scurvy family. Loujean remained the only daughter until her sixteenth year when Mama had the baby, another girl. But Mama had died and the baby had lived and was Loujean's now and forever to raise. Staying in school wasn't an option for Loujean now that she had her sister to care for. What she named the baby allows a look into this young poverty-stricken girl's very tender and loving heart and it's no wonder that Earl's warm heart yearned for hers.

Loujean's three brothers, Alamand, Pee Wee and Buck were trying to find a way to bury Mama. Mama was in cold storage at the funeral home in Jasper, Florida, right over the Georgia line until the family could come up with the burial money. Their father, the old man, did it up right when Aunt Becky died, but now he was done with everything, and he still owed money to the funeral director for Aunt Becky's funeral. Mama wasn't getting buried until someone paid up.

In Janice Daugharty's novel EARL IN THE YELLOW SHIRT, the story of Mama's burial and the story of each member of this endearing and exasperating family is told from each person's point of view. Earl, although not a family member, is so important to them that we also hear his point of view. He becomes a central character as he struggles to find a way to raise money to help the Scurvys bury their dead. Earl is kind and has a good heart, and Loujean can see herself with him in the future.

Scurvy, despite being this family's name, is a disease, and the family is somewhat of a disease to the community in which they live. But put together, the children of the family have a lot inside of them to see. Alamand, the youngest, has art in his blood and is driven to draw. Pee Wee has alcohol in his blood and got "shot up" in Korea. Pee Wee feels that Mama is better off dead, after the struggles she had while alive. Buck is full of Earl's stories that he's heard a dozen times, and a belly full of digging post holes for fences for a little bit of money. Loujean has the beauty of flowers, birds and nature that sustains her and she sees them in her own artist's eye. Earl has it in him to risk his life to see that his friends' mother is properly buried.

No one, including the Scurvys, are trash. The old man's language is peppered with hain't and hit, and not a one of them has any kind of education. But saying "hain't" and "hit" for "it" aren't sins. Running moonshine isn't a sin when people can't eat or provide warmth in the winter. Being poor isn't a sin, and neither is being uneducated a sin. The Scurvys are part of the invisible of the world who people don't see or don't want to see. The sin lies within those who don't care and who do nothing to help raise these people up and to see them as humans in need.

For the two hundred-forty pages of EARL IN THE YELLOW SHIRT, their sins are forgiven. This is a beautiful piece of literary fiction that everyone can enjoy. Meeting the Scurvys and Earl is a reading experience you won't forget.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars southern fiction at its best!!!!, October 10, 2003

By 

JJ "avid reader" (Meridianville, Alabama United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Earl in the Yellow Shirt: Novel, A (Paperback)

This author is great! I have read all her books except Whistle & I just bought it. Her dipiction of the south is the best. Her characters are very believeable. I would love to know them. Please Ms Daugharty more books with the same theme as your previous books.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Summer Read, June 19, 2002

By 

J. Corbitt (Birmingham, AL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Earl in the Yellow Shirt: Novel, A (Paperback)

I agree with the other reviews - this is a superb book. My husband is from that area of Georgia so I know firsthand that Ms. Daugharty truly writes what she knows [including the dialect]. The summary on the back makes it sound like it would be dark and depressing, but on the contrary. I finished it feeling very positive and glad I had read it.