Verbena [Mass Market Paperback]

Nanci Kincaid (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 2003

When Bobby died in a car wreck with another woman at his side, Bena was left with five kids, a small house, and a big empty place in her heart. Five years later, she's got two daughters who've run off with no-good men, a backyard full of marijuana plants none of her kids will own up to, and a semi-personal relationship with Jesus. But she's trying. And when she's ready to invest again in love, she knows what she wants: Lucky McKale. And despite the fact that he's married, he seems to want her too...

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sixth-grade teacher Bena Eckerd's biggest fault outside of crying hysterically every time she walks into a church is to blame herself for "messing up" every time life deals her a low blow. She was happily married to Bob, or so she thought, until he died in a car accident with another woman at his side. She thinks she has raised her five children well, until her two oldest daughters run off with no-account men, her third moves away with Bena's arch rival, and her eldest son chooses the one woman in the world whose very name causes Bena anguish. She can't believe that good-natured mailman Lucky McKale really loves her, since he is married to Sue Cox, the most beautiful and richest woman in Baxter County, Ala. But after Sue Cox herself agrees to a divorce and blesses their union, Bena finally feels she can accept Lucky's proposal. A new kind of domestic unit is formed, with exes and stepchildren integrated into one colorful family. Then disaster strikes Lucky disappears. Kincaid is both warmhearted and clear-eyed about the compromises people make to find happiness. Bena and her children are fully dimensional, good at sassy give-and-take and credible in both mundane and dramatic confrontations. Race relationships are gently defined (Bena's best friend is Mayfred, a black colleague), and there's straight talk about religious faith and feminine jealousy and solidarity. Kincaid never lets sentimentality or the sitcom syndrome invade a lively and authentic story of a resilient woman's doubts, troubles, heartbreak and survival, and she crafts her tale with charm, humor and wise understanding. Agent, Liz Darhansoff. Literary Guild selection. (May 17)Forecast: This novel should take off with strong regional sales in the South, and could achieve a wider audience through word of mouth.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

What a mess! The family in Kincaid's third novel is a fascinating mess of southern charm. Verbena (Bena for short) is an exceptionally nice sixth-grade teacher in Alabama, who has five almost-grown kids and a nice husband named Bobby. Then Bobby is killed in an auto crash, and--surprise--he wasn't alone. Then Bena's oldest son brings his new girlfriend, the younger sister of Bobby's lover, home for dinner. And she lets slip that a baby also died in the car crash. Kincaid has lots more in store for the ever-resilient Bena, who seems perfectly capable of standing up to everything the twisting and turning plot throws at her. Through it all, Kincaid's writing is as real as it is delightful. Take this small piece of teacher Bena's description of junior high: "Skin broke out, hearts broke open, lockers were broken into, heads got busted, kids got busted. Lies got told and the truth got told, too--and both were terrifying." Bena's life is kinda like that. She's good, and so is her story. Peggy Barber
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade (October 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425191710
• ISBN-13: 978-0425191712
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,409,379 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A STORY RELATED WITH HONESTY AND HUMOR, June 8, 2002

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Verbena : A Novel (Hardcover)

Nanci Kincaid is a creator par excellence; she creates strong, robust Southern women who may be down on their luck but never defeated. Happy to say this is the case with Verbena Martin Eckert McHale, known as "Bena."

Being widowed with five children is bad. It is worse when that widowhood is caused by a fatal car accident, a car occupied by your husband and a woman half his age. Thus, Bena is forced to not only mourn her dead husband, but also to wonder what her marriage had really meant.

However, there's precious little time for musing as there are children to be cared for, a mortgaged house to maintain, and a public school 6th grade teaching job. If fortune were fair, Bena would be in for some good years. Not so, one offspring plants a marijuana field on their property, and two daughters run away with a ne'er-do- wells.

Things look up when Bena meets mailman Lucky McHale, and she thinks he's the answer. They marry, but her happiness doesn't last as he disappears after two short months.

At its heart this is a story of survival related with honesty, authenticity, and humor. Bena is a woman many will be glad to know.

- Gail Cooke

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An enchanting novel by a wonderful author, August 18, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Verbena : A Novel (Hardcover)

Verbena is my favorite book, and has maintained that position ever since I read it for the first time. I continue to re-read it every few months, and it's definetly one of those novels that you wouldn't be able to forget if you tried to. I would recommend it to anybody who has not yet read it and experienced the incredibly moving story of Bena and Lucky, and of all the other delightful characters in this novel. I envy anybody who is about to read Nanci Kinkaid's exquisite novel for the first time.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love And Pain In A Red State, November 1, 2006

By 

H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Verbena (Mass Market Paperback)

What Bobbie Ann Mason has done for Kentucky and Lee Smith for Virginia, Nanci Kincaid does for Alabama. In VERBENA she has written a novel that illuminates that part of the South with a gaggle of characters as real as the waitress at your favorite meat-and-three restaurant. Verbena is the lovable central character, the mother of five children and the wife of two husbands, a middle school teacher and a Baptist-- she would almost have to be. She of course has a good dose of Baptist guilt and cannot handle too much happiness for long periods of time. She ruminates that loving Lucky (her second husband and most decent of men) was "just too wonderful. . . to be anything Christian."

Verbena's (she is called "Bena" for short) life often is a mess. Her children are a mess-- one daughter marries a no-good who leaves her right after she gets pregnant, another runs away with an aspiring musician whom she takes away from her mother's boy friend's soon-to-be ex-wife, a son falls in love with the sister of the woman who had an affair with his now dead father-- and her house is messy too, the kind that visitors charitably say looks lived in. It has brown and rust carpet, "not because she liked it but because it wouldn't show dirt." She records her children's growth with pencil marks on the wall. She describes her first husband Bobby as a casserole man as opposed to a meat-and-potatoes type of guy. "He liked all things mixed together from the beginning." But for all of Bena's craziness-- she cries way too much in church-- she is wonderfully resilient, capable of much love and like Faulkner's Dilsey, she endures.

Even though Ms. Kincaid can be a tad wordy-- she is a Southern writer after all-- she often writes insightful prose about people in general and women in particular. Example: Ms. Kincaid on a mother's awful knowledge that one of her children is destined for sorrow: "It's something that cannot be explained, how a mother senses the sort of heartache that lies ahead for a certain child, how she can glimpse it and try to prepare for it--but cannot prevent it no matter how hard she tries." (p. 140.)Then there is the best discription I've ever read of Baptists and guilt, what Lucky calls "Baptist math." He's an authority on the subject because his "mama" practiced it. "'It's based on the belief that there are never enough blessings to go around, never enough happiness for everybody. Like each family is allotted just a little bit and you got to be careful not to use it up too fast, you know.'" Finally Lucky-- clearly the best thing that ever happened to Bena-- reminds her that "life has got a mind of its own." Said another way, life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.

Ms. Kincaid may be a little easy on both race and relationships as black people and white people and Mexicans get along together as do practically everybody's exes at family get-togethers. Nevertheless she has written a great story with characters whom you will remember long after you've raced through this book. I for one would love to have Lucky and Bena for neighbors.