Customer Reviews

Where Trouble Sleeps

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Clyde Edgerton is a first-rate story teller. With well honed wit at the ready he lampoons foibles and spoofs the self-righteous. All of this is done with affection and bemused understanding.

In Raney, his debut novel, Mr. Edgerton displayed a remarkable ability to capture the Southern voice. He continues to do so, much to the delight of his ever growing readership.

Where Trouble Sleeps , Mr. Edgerton's seventh story, returns to Listre, a fictional name for the author's hometown. Inhabited by unforgettable eccentrics, Listre is a North Carolina bump in the road recently bisected by a blinking red and yellow light. The eccentrics come with Edgerton territory; the light is the result of a mule-truck head-on.

With Wednesday evening church meetings and 25 cent Friday night movies, Listre, in 1950, is viewed by its fundamental Baptist citizens as a good place to settle. Their spiritual guide is Preacher Crenshaw, a staunch believer who is sorely tested. First, his young son, Paul, is tempted by the devil. The boy "has misused his sex....in ways that do not respect his body." A pious yet practical man, Preacher Crenshaw leads Paul in prayers of repentance, then orders, "Now son, stand up, pull down your pants and turn around."

Next, his devout secretary, Mrs. Claude T. Clark, who has sprained her ankle, takes up residence in the church office, where she over medicates, thanks God for all His blessings, including the Milky Way, and is visited by Jesus, who needs a little money for "a fruit pie and Pepsi."

These vexations are nothing compared to the specter of lust aroused in Preacher Crenshaw by teenaged Cheryl Daniels. When he prays for release from this temptation, an unresponsive deity does not shake his faith: "He'd not felt an answer from God in the middle of the night, but he expected one the next morning." Listre is a God-fearing town and prayer will prevail.

This crossroads community is seen differently by Jack Umstead who arrives in a stolen Buick Eight. To him, "Whole place looked settled, ripe, timid, kind of stupid. Just right." Deciding to stay for a few days, Jack begins to ingratiate himself with the townspeople, hoping to discover where money might be hidden.

Sitting on a bench outside the gas station called "Train's Place," Jack hears of the Blaine sisters, proprietors of a chicken and ice store. Frightened by thunder storms, the aging spinsters flee their store during heavy rains to seek safety with their married sister. That's an ideal set-up for this mustachioed conman.

As he waits for dark clouds to gather, Jack becomes acquainted with others. He seduces the naive Cheryl, and is attracted to Alease Toomey, 6-year-old Stephen's mother. At her house, in addition to the asthmatic spoiled Stephen, he finds drunk Uncle Raleigh, a World War I veteran, who tears a medicine chest off the wall while battling a bath.

Mr. Edgerton's smooth segues from one narrator to another enrich his story's tapestry. He not only echoes their voices, he inhabits their minds and hearts. There is Mrs. Toomey taking her son and his friend to see the electric chair "so you all can see what will happen if you ever let the Devil lead you into a bad sin." Without seeing the chair with straps on its arms, young Stephen already has things pretty well figured out - after all, his mother reads to him every night from "Aunt Margaret's Bible Stories."

There are more colorful characters who could only spring full-blown from the mind of this greatly gifted author. Mr. Edgerton couples their voices with his considerable narrative skills as he builds to a tragicomic denouement. He has a musician's ear, an artist's eye, and a generous heart. Clyde Edgerton is quite simply superb.

Of all of Edgerton's novels I've read so far, this was my least favorite, although there are portions that entertained me. In small town Listre in the 50's, 7 year old Stephen's life is unremarkable except for occasional oddities, such as his mother taking him and a friend to see the electric chair (for a deterrent) and the arrival of the mysterious "gypsy man," Delbert Jones (re name: Jack Umbaugh) whose slealth gets him into town but can't get him out.

Edgerton's live reading from this book was the most entertaining author reading I have been lucky enough to attend--he read in character, played the banjo, and made the scenes he presented come to life. I was a bit disappointed that the whole novel didn't live up to the promise of the portions he shared aloud.

For a better sample of his work, read Walking Across Egypt, Raney, and The Floatplane Notebooks.

Clyde Edgerton, author of the homey, feel-good novels "Raney" and one of my all-time favorites "Walking Across Egypt" has penned another sweet story set in the North Carolina town of Listre. It is the early 1950's, when towns still had one blinker light, one gas station and a general store, and were peopled with religious yet often hypocritical citizens.

Into this setting comes Jack Umstead, driving up with a stolen Buick 8, an alias, and a well rehearsed plan on how to fleece the good people of Listre. But Jack doesn't count on the resolve of the folks he meets, or the spunk of one old gal with a nasty looking shotgun and a good aim.

"Trouble" took a little while to lure me in. My liking for the folks of Listre grew slowly, but when it hit I was hooked - I was thoroughly engrossed in their lives and situations. Like the slow pace of life in that long-ago southern town, this novel took its time but eventually won my heart.

Although I'm only an 11-year old, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I bought it at a small book store in South Carolina for the car trip back. One thing I didn't understand was where Edgerton just wrote about random things happening in Listre.

This is a slim little novel that can be read in no time at all, but Clyde Edgerton's Where Trouble Sleeps is big-time enjoyable. Skeptics might note three strikes against this story: 1--it's set in the 1950's; 2--it takes place in a one-blinker-light town; 3--its characters are Southern to the core. Here's how Edgerton disarms these doubter's objections: 1--there's not a hint of nostalgia in his 1950's; 2--fascinating stuff happens in his little town, and 3--he writes dialog that sticks in your mind like kudzu on a pine tree. Readers who accidentally stumble upon this book have a treat in store because there are six previous books by Edgerton to enjoy.

Where Trouble Sleeps carries on the wonderful southernness of Walking Across Egypt and Raney. He has the ability to create female characters better than any other male author living. I had to laugh when little Stephen Toomey was running the southern Baptist litany of deadly sins through his young, unquestioning mind. There are so many thoughtful dichotomies and ironies, yet, I chose to read this book at face value--which is funny, funny, funny. Mr. Edgerton must have been sitting in on some of my family's reunions.

Clyde Edgerton's loving and funny evocations of the rural South capture the charms and strengths of the South.

His old women are especially memorable: drawing their confidence from their religious faith, they don't need a shotgun to assert themselves (and, if they DO need a shotgun, they know how to use that, too). Contrary to his publicist's ads, Mr. Edgerton is not out to mock the religious hypocrisies of his characters. Yes, they are only human and don't always live up to their ideals, but it is also very clear that they draw strength from their faith.

Where Trouble Sleeps is a parable of temptation and how a small town can be corrupted. Whether the corrupter is "Satan" or just a conman is up to the reader's interpretation, but it is a delightful read either way. The story manages to introduce you to what seems to be most of the population of Listre, North Carolina and keeps them fresh in your mind with a few deft strokes of the author's pen.

This writer had fun remembering the fifties with inspiration and real-life events to draw from in a whimsical way at a stop-in-the-road place which didn't even have one right light. A small town has at least two. Some way, they managed to get a flashing yellow light out in the middle of nowhere. Dominated by the church and its activities, particularly the elderly secretary Dorothea who really thought that Jesus had visited her there in the church one night when she gave him ten dollars.

"Jesus" actually was Jack, a criminal who accidentally found the place and stayed around long enough to cause a bit of mischief at the church and found himself in hot water looking down the barrel of a shotgun. Jesus loves Chuck, but he had a whole of a good time fooling the old woman. Preacher Crenshaw was tempted by a young, shapely woman, a sex kitten of sorts with loose scrumples. He thought foolishly like old men tend to do tht she sorshipped him. In fact, he felt that way about all of the good-looking women, but he tried to deflect the worship of himself toward God and Jesus. Saving lost souls, bringing "lost sheep" to Jesus Christ was dead serious business, involving eternal life in heaven or hell. His onerous plump wife was a burden he had to bear, so as to appear humble. There were lots of prayers and hymn singing as in all tiny churches all over America.

The motel where Jack made his headquarters was identical to one I always wanted to explore in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, birthplace of Senator and actor Fred Thompson. There was an office, and little one-room cabins for the tired and weary to rest. You must read the joke about remembering; it is worth a thousand dollars. "In spite of illness, one can remain alive past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways."

This was the kind of delightful "nonsense" incidents which Sam Venable would write. It takes an expert writer to carry it off. Clyde Edgerton also wrote WALKING ACROSS EGYPT which was turned into a funny, clever movie. He is a native Southerner, which means he's extra special.

Clyde's book, Where Trouble Sleeps, kept a smile on my face. As I turned each page, a new character appeared in their own crisis. As a native North Carolinain, I see this as typical smalltown life. Everyone knows everything about the other residents, and the humor keeps going. Where Trouble, the weather predicting dog, sleeps turns out to be the topic of each morning's conversations.

This is not Edgerton's funniest book. That would be In Memory of Junior. But it's still full of wonderful insight into the life and especially the dialogue of rural and small town people. Edgerton is so dead-on with the way these folks talk and act and think, it's scary. Anyone from this neck of the woods will immediately recognize friends and family members. I think Edgerton's more than just a regional writer, though, and he deserves wider recognition.