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Summary
Summary
"The time is the summer of 1958. The place is Dewmont, Texas, a town that the great American postwar boom has somehow passed by. A sad, hollow beat trails the kids who tune into rockabilly on the radio and waste their weekends at the Dairy Queen. And an undetected menace simmers under the heat that clings to the skin like thin molasses." "For blissfully ignorant thirteen-year-old Stanley Mitchell, the end of innocence comes with his discovery of an old trove of passionate yet troubled love letters that lead him to a long-ago house fire and the tragic deaths of two very different young women. Obsessed with investigating their fates, Stanley finds a guide and mentor in black, elderly Buster Lighthouse Smith, a retired Indian Reservation policeman who now runs the projector at the drive-in theater owned by Stanley's parents. The laconic Buster tutors Stanley on the finer points of Sherlock Holmes, the blues, and life's lost dreams." "But not every buried thing stays dead. And in one terrifying night of rushing creek water and thundering rain, an arcane, murderous force will suddenly rise from the past to threaten the boy - and test the limits of Buster's strength and wisdom. In the end the old man teaches Stanley a lesson that will haunt him always, about the forever short distance between living flesh and the dust from which it came."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Author Notes
Joe R. Lansdale was born in Gladewater, Tex. in 1951. He attended Tyler Junior College, the University of Texas at Austin, and Stephen F. Austin State University. Lansdale has also had a varied career, having worked as a bouncer, a bodyguard, a transportation manager, a custodian, and a karate instructor before becoming a fulltime writer in 1981.
Lansdale's written work includes several novels and more than 200 short stories. Although his favorite genre is fantasy, with suspense a close second, he has also written mysteries, horror, science fiction, and westerns. Some titles include Rumble Tumble, Dead in the West, The Nightrunners, Cold in July, By Bizarre Hands and The Drive-in (a 'B' Movie with Blood and Popcorn. Made in Texas) . In addition, Lansdale has edited the short-story anthologies Best of the West, The New Frontier: Best of the West 2, and Razored Saddles.
Lansdale has received five Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers of America, including one for "The Night They Missed the Horror Show." He has also been awarded the British Fantasy Award and the American Horror Award.
Joe Lansdale and his second wife, Karen, have two children. They live in Nacagdoches, Tex.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The atmosphere is as thick as an East Texas summer day in Edgar-winner Lansdale's (The Bottoms) engaging, multilayered regional mystery, which harks back to 1958. Thirteen-year-old Stanley Mitchel, Jr., has enough on his hands just growing up in Dewmont, Tex., when he literally stumbles on a buried cache of love letters. Stanley pursues the identity of the two lovers with help from the projectionist at his family's drive-in, an aged black man who quotes Sherlock Holmes and doesn't mince words about the world's injustices. As the truth of a gruesome 20-year-old double murder comes to light in the sleepy town, so do the facts of life, death, men, women and race for young Stanley. Unfortunately, this wealth of experience sometimes strains credulity. For instance, Stanley, his sister, Callie, and friend Richard witness a secret burial, see a local phantom, are chased by a murderer and barely miss being hit by a train-all in one night. As the older and wiser Stanley says of the past, "More had happened to my family in one summer than had happened in my entire life." The "down-home" dialect is occasionally overdone, too, with more ripe sayings than Ross Perot on caffeine. But Lansdale clearly knows and loves his subject and enlivens his haunting coming-of-age tale with touches of folklore and humor. (Jan. 8) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Long and hot--'twas ever thus--is the summer of 1958 in backwater Dewmont, Texas, but almost nothing that happens to13-year-old Stanley Mitchell during its course is remotely typical. Stanley, whose daddy runs the Dew Drop, the town's drive-in theater, is at the outset a thoroughly ordinary boy who likes movies, comic books, riding his bike, and fooling with his dog Nub. Stanley's innocence about life is virtually seamless. He thinks sex, for instance, comes "after five and before the number seven." Enlightenment begins with his accidental discovery of a Pandora's box of strange love letters that once belonged to young, tragically beset Margaret Stilwind, subsequently murdered. Reading them, Stanley is hooked and transformed. Innocent he may be, but he's also the stuff of born detectives, with secrets his natural prey. Helped by remarkable ex-Indian Reservation police officer Buster Lighthorse Smith, he sets out to stalk the sinister Stilwinds, Dewmont's richest, most powerful family. Each Stilwind secret conceals, oyster-like, a variety of others--secrets within secrets. But before Stanley can find the answers he's so intent on, he loses that which you can't lose twice, leaving him feeling "as if something inside had been stolen, taken away and mistreated, then returned without all of its legs." So long, innocence. Funny, scary, heartwarming, heart-pounding, Tom Sawyer-ish, Huck Finn-ish, provocative, evocative, sometimes actually wise: the best ever from talented Lansdale (Captains Outrageous, 2001, etc.)--a genre-crossing tour de force to spark the most jaded appetites. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Lansdale makes a rich stew of memory and mystery in the voice of Stanley Mitchel Jr., who is 13 in 1958 and is writing down, in midlife, what he recalls. His parents own the drive-in in Dewmont, Texas; his dad calls his mom "Gal"; his sister, Callie, is turn-your-head pretty and feisty besides. Stanley finds in the burnt ruins behind the drive-in a cache of love letters. Stanley--innocent enough at the beginning of the story to still believe in Santa Claus--is fascinated by the letters and soon learns that the fire marked the deaths of two young women, long ago. Those deaths ripple through the pages, as Stanley struggles with knowledge of good and evil: his friend Richard's abusive dad; the black cook's stalker boyfriend; the drive-in projectionist who faces twin demons of age and alcohol. Stanley's mother, father, and sister are vivid, glowing personages. Stanley doesn't unravel everything, but race and power, and what people do to each other in the name of desire and religion, coalesce to a mighty climax. --GraceAnne A. DeCandido