South of Resurrection [Hardcover]

Jonis Agee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1997

A novel of love, family drama, and social conflict in the Ozarks--written by a "gifted poet of that dark lushness in the heart of the American landscape" (The New York Times Book Review).

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Fans of Agee (A 38. Special & a Lonely Heart, LJ 5/1/95) have another treat in store for them. When Moline Bedwell returns to the Ozark town of Resurrection, Missouri, after 20 years, she merely wants to sell her parents' home and find a resting place for her sister's ashes. Widowed, middle-aged, and poor, Moline looks back on her "weird" past and anticipates a lonely future. But when old issues involving guilt, family, and previous boyfriend Dayrell Bell surface, it becomes clear that we take our past with us wherever we go. Everyone's secrets are eventually revealed in a poetic prose that delineates Agee's earthy characters and brings the impoverished town to life. Recommended for public libraries.?Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, Md.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

You can go home again, the heroine of Agee's earthy, deeply satisfying latest discovers--you just can't expect home to be easy, or life there particularly simple. Agee (Strange Angels, 1993, etc.) has always demonstrated a distinctive skill for creating complex, tough-minded, open-hearted women. In the past, though, her novels--while zesty--have sometimes felt loose, too filled with rich talk at the expense of incident. Here, the talk (wonderfully salty and vigorous without seeming archaic or forced) is in the service of a lively and convincing plot. Middle-aged Moline Bedwell, having survived a disastrous marriage and the death of several loved ones, returns home to Resurrection, Missouri, in the Ozarks, in search of sanctuary. But solace is in short supply: The wonderfully named Heart Hog corporation wants to buy up much of the land around Resurrection for development, effectively splitting the townsfolk into two warring camps--those hungry for the freedom they believe money and change will bring, and those convinced that what's best about Resurrection is its isolation. Moline also encounters Dayrell Bell, the still handsome love of her youth. She'd left Resurrection in the aftermath of an accident that left Dayrell badly injured, and a young girl dead. Dayrell, it turns out, is as charming, and seemingly as wayward, as ever. He also still seems to labor under the influence of his violent, self-destructive brother McCall, who's been recruited by Heart Hog to apply pressure to those unwilling to give up their land. Moline finds herself reluctantly drawn into the battle on the side of the preservationists, and back into Dayrell's orbit. Meanwhile, Agee gently peels away the many layers of history that accumulate when a family has lived in one place for a very long time. There's a pleasing and believable succession of secrets revealed. And Moline and Dayrell's wary courtship is among the most brambly, and original, in recent fiction. One of the best novels by anyone writing today about the old, long-settled corner of the South. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 360 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1ST edition (October 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670858099
• ISBN-13: 978-0670858095
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,260,339 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and grew up in Nebraska and Missouri, places where many of my stories and novels are set. In all, I'm the author of thirteen books, including five novels, five collections of short fiction, and two books of poetry.

My most recent novel is The River Wife (Random House, 2007), which is about five generations of women who experience love, heartbreak, passion, and deceit against the backdrop of the nineteenth-century South. I'm the Adele Hall Professor of English at The University of Nebraska -- Lincoln, where I teach creative writing and twentieth-century fiction.

I'm married to the writer Brent Spencer. Together we are the indentured servants to two bichons frises and one horse. We live in Ponca Hills, which is on the Missouri River, north of Omaha.

I own twenty pairs of cowboy boots (some of them works of art), love the open road, and believe that ecstasy and hard work are the basic ingredients of life and writing.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine writing, strong characters, interesting plot, December 4, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Epworth, Georgia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: South of Resurrection (Hardcover)

The strengths of Jonis Agee as a novelist, her precise observations, her attention to small details, and her complicated, well drawn characters, shine through in this novel. Like "Sweet Eyes," her first novel, "South of Resurrection" peels through the layers of a small town to get at some basic human truths. Agee is particularly effective at portraying a landscape and the people who live on it. Her protagonist, Moline Bedwell, tears through the novel with the past chasing her. The inevitable collision of the past with her return to her home town fulfills the promise of the opening pages.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Dirty, Beat-up Folks, June 25, 2009

By 

M. Marlene Smith "tiger lily" (somewhere, Georgia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: South of Resurrection (Mass Market Paperback)

Throughout my time with this novel I kept hoping some of the main characters would PLEASE take a bath! Moline seemed to keep herself fairly clean (when not shoveling manure and cleaning out filthy water tanks) but Dayrell was always dirty and suffering from various injuries that left him bloody and broken. All the more reason, it would seem, to exclude most of the sex scenes which were cringe-inducing exercises in showing us hillbilly love. I actually skimmed through or ignored those particular passages altogether.
The story itself was interesting enough though it lagged in parts; in short: Heart Hog Corp. is endeavoring to wipe out the local farming community by constructing a monstrous, industrial-sized hog farm of it's own and recruits one or two soulless locals to use some redneck mafia tactics so the good folks will cave in. Moline comes home after years away and joins the anti-Heart Hog crusade, rekindles an ancient romance with Dayrell and generally tries to help some of her relatives spiff up the family farm. Chaos ensues.
Agee's gift lies in creating unique characters, though in my opinion the males are more well-drawn. A pitiful cousin of Moline's, Lukey, is just that - pitiful in her unwavering love for a philandering, violent bully who just happens to be Dayrell's brother. The two even shared Lukey for awhile. But I digress. I never could get a clear picture of Moline and Lukey in my head; Dayrell occluded them with his various and sundry odors and general hillbilliness (I know that's not really a word). One thing is for sure: everyone in Moline's small Missouri hometown can drive beautifully while intoxicated.
I don't regret reading it, but Agee's The Weight of Dreams is much better.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, August 18, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: South of Resurrection (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a good story with an interesting protagonist and a compelling conflict between small town and corporate America. But Jonis Agee is ill-served by her editor/copyreader, and errors in the most basic of English constructions become too distracting.