South of Reason: A Novel [Paperback]

Cindy Eppes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 5, 2002

"Everybody in Rosalita, Texas," wondered why the Sanders family had come back to town and bought the house next door to Lou Jean Perry. It was the absolute last place they should want to be. Now, Kayla Sanders looks back on that sizzling summer of her childhood, when the secrets of the past cast long shadows over two families' lives.

In June 1967 Lou Jean Perry's husband, the first and only person from Rosalita killed in Vietnam, had been dead for more than a year. When thirteen-year-old Kayla first met her, a laughing Lou Jean executed a perfect backbend right there on her sparkling clean kitchen floor. It stood to reason that this bright-spirited woman -- the complete opposite of Kayla's brittle, churchgoing mother, Sarah Jo -- would become Kayla's new best friend.

As the heat and madness of summer intensified, Sarah Jo's motives for moving next to Lou Jean would become clear, but not before a family's foundation cracks and crumbles, a woman is driven to the brink of madness, and a young girl discovers that passion listens not to the mind's reason but to the heart's demands.

Writing about family with a poignant intensity, Cindy Eppes draws on her Southern roots to create a coming-of-age story told by a narrator straight out of Eudora Welty, yet indelibly stamped with a distinctive, contemporary style. Beautifully crafted, "South of Reason" shows Eppes to be an extraordinary storyteller, weaving a shimmering web shot through with the rainbow colors of life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kayla Marie Sanders, on the cusp of a tricky adolescence, tries to understand why her parents have left Cameron, Tex., and moved to Rosalita, in Eppes's poignant debut. Overheard conversations between Kayla's mother and grandmother suggest that something other than chance is behind the family's decision to live next door to beautiful, eccentric Lou Jean Perry and her son, Charles Dale. (Everyone gets an articulated middle name, in a somewhat stale Southern-fiction convention.) As things in Kayla's household grow stranger and tenser, she struggles in Sherwood Anderson fashion to understand circumstances and motives beyond her control. Impressive if not groundbreaking, Eppes's tale is unassuming and complex in its execution, full of rich, authentic details, colorful and often surprising metaphors and expertly imagined characters. They have to draw upon their deepest reserves of compassion and self-knowledge to navigate a tumultuous sea of conflicting feelings. The "mystery" of the Sanderses' move that Kayla and Charles Dale are half-siblings is dispensed with early on; the larger palette is what's important, and the story plows forward to a conclusion both painful and necessary, which poses as many emotional questions as it answers. Along the way are more than a few resonant moments in the kitchen between Kayla and her mysterious kindred spirit, Lou Jean; fans of Like Water for Chocolate will enjoy the celebration of food preparation as a mystical ritual. This finely crafted debut marks Eppes as a writer worth watching. Author appearances in Texas. (Mar. 5)Forecast: Strong sales in the South should jump-start this appealing and accessible first novel, and a blurb from Richard Russo will alert readers across the country to its merits.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Almost from the moment 13-year-old Kayla Sanders and her parents move back to their small Texas hometown, something seems awry. And the problem appears to center on next-door neighbor Lou Jean Perry, a Vietnam War widow raising sons Charles Dale, 13, and David, six. In an attempt to understand her family's situation, narrator Kayla puts together snatches of adult conversation, taunts from a neighbor boy, and her own observation of the similarities between her father and Charles Dale, who is three months her junior. Then she asks questions, particularly of her forthright Gran, as she struggles to come to terms with age-old conflicts that bring on a mental breakdown and a marital breakup during one short summer. Had the right questions been asked of the right people, Kayla might have uncovered more about the early adulthood of her parents, and Eppes might have strengthened the plot and kept the tension from dissipating. Still, Eppes has created memorably human characters, and her storytelling skills are apparent in this promising, if flawed, debut. Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Atria (March 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743437993
• ISBN-13: 978-0743437998
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,952,187 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars remembering the dependencies and betrayals of childhood, March 20, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: South of Reason: A Novel (Paperback)

For anyone who remembers being conflicted and confused by a mother's irrational behavior, or half in love with someone else's mother, look no further than South of Reason. It's the era of lawn sprinklers and bicycles and marshmallow salads and adolescence without sex, drugs and Britney. Even a stranger to South Texas will feel its heat and dust, its mixed cultures and rituals of food, in Cindy Eppes's wonderful novel. Strong, memorable characters populate the town of Rosalita, and young Kayla Marie's daily life. And characters with pasts, and secrets. Experiencing Kayla's adoration and heartbreak and wonder is a pleasure. Highly recommended.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars North of Intuition, July 30, 2002

By 

Mamalinde "mamalinde" (Dallas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: South of Reason: A Novel (Paperback)

Mysteries and jealousies swirl and simmer in the heat of a south Texas summer. The story twists through the pages like a tumbleweed in a hot Texas wind. The child Kayla comes of age ... and to an awareness that things aren't always as they seem. "Mother used religion as a wifely whip," Kayla observes. Meanwhile, neighbor Lou Jean washes her hands compulsively. Families, betrayals, and friendships are never quite as they appear. Balanced by an inherently nice, although spineless father and a wild and rowdy grandmother, Kayla watches as her family life crumbles and transforms, and begins to see things from a different perspective, while the beautiful neighbor next door spirals out of control. And her mother changes into ... what? Full of unexpected twists and turns, the summer Kayla's family moves from Cameron to Rosalita evolves into an ever changing mosaic of emotion.

From her depiction of the sticky juice of a ripe peach on a hot day to the portrait of a night of Texas football, Cindy Eppes gives an amazingly brilliant portrayal of a sense of time and place, betrayer and betrayed, and of the heart and soul of a girl coming of age. An amazing entry in the "first book" category. I highly recommend this.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pure Pleasure, June 23, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: South of Reason: A Novel (Paperback)

In Kayla, Cindy Eppes has created a young narrator who's smart, sassy, articulate and a joy to be with. The story - not an easy one to pull off - is skillfully crafted and precisely told with humor and warmth, in memorable fashion. I read right though it, and can't wait to see what Ms. Eppes will pull off next.