A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty

September 26, 2011
The Slocumb women suffer from an unfortunate curse: every 15 years something bad happens. Ginny gave birth to Liza when she was 15. And Liza had Mosey when she was 15. Now it’s Mosey who’s 15, and she’s nervous. But the curse strikes in a different form, bringing a stroke to Liza that renders her mute and crippled, leaving her husband “Big” to care for her. Wanting to put a pool in the yard for Liza’s water therapy, Ginny has a willow uprooted, unearthing the bones of a baby—Liza’s baby. This macabre discovery sends Mosey, Ginny, and Big in search of answers about the baby and Mosey’s identity. Their quest, told in alternating points-of-view among all main characters, uncovers an old feud between Liza and best friend Melissa, an illicit affair, the vengeance of the thwarted party, and drug addiction long hidden. Along the way Mosey puts her life in danger and learns a thing or two about family. Jackson’s newest (after Backseat Saints) is highly immersive, evoking the suffocation of rural Mississippi and using a teen pregnancy mystery to create a compelling page-turner. While Jackson doesn’t entirely avoid clichés, the care that she’s taken in developing the relationships between the Slocumb women makes up for it.

November 1, 2011
Jackson (Backseat Saints, 2010, etc.) sticks with her specialty—plucky Southern women who overcome male ill treatment from their past—in this novel about a grandmother, daughter and granddaughter who confront a suddenly uncovered family secret. Ginny Slocumb, now 45, got pregnant at 15 after what was basically date rape and ended up raising daughter Liza as a single mom. Liza, who has always been headstrong, never named the father who impregnated her at 15. Shortly after giving birth she ran away to live a druggy life on the streets until she returned to Ginny's home with 2-year-old Mosey and entered drug rehab. Now that Mosey is 15, Liza and Ginny fear she will follow in their sexual steps. To help her avoid the temptations at the public high school, Liza even found the tuition money to send Mosey to private Calvary High until Liza, although drug-free for years, suffered a debilitating stroke at a Calvary function, leaving her semi-paralyzed. When a box with a baby's jawbone inside is discovered in the Slocumb backyard, the police try to figure out if a murder has been committed, and if so by whom; it seems another infant went missing shortly before Mosey was born. The three Slocumbs react separately. Liza knows the truth, but cannot find the words in her damaged brain to explain what happened. Ginny fears what might have happened, and her efforts to protect Liza and Mosey lead her to re-activate a past relationship. Mosey, already angry at the older Slocumbs and prodded by her two friends, fellow adolescent outsiders, is emboldened to solve the mystery of the bones and her own identity; for if the dead baby belongs to Liza, who does Mosey belong to? Snappy dialogue with a Southern twang, spiritual uplift and undeniably likable characters—"Quirky Cute" at its best.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 1, 2011

Jackson (Backseat Saints) has written an unusual Southern family saga revolving around three generations of lonely, hardscrabble Slocumb women. Grandmother Ginny is the glue that holds them together when her ex-drug addict daughter, Liza, has a severe stroke, leaving her voiceless except for a few vowel sounds. Fifteen-year-old granddaughter Mosey is the same age her mother and grandmother were when they had their daughters, but Mosey isn't like her forebears; she's scarcely been kissed by a boy. When Ginny decides to pull out the old willow tree in the backyard to make room for a pool to use in rehabilitating Liza, a shallow grave is uncovered, revealing a small skeleton dressed in tattered baby clothes and unleashing a series of events for which Liza seems to have an explanation--but she can't tell. The story is told in the alternating voices of the women as the mystery unfolds. VERDICT Liza, as the unreliable narrator, is used to perfection in this warm family story that teeters between emotional highs and lows, laughter and tears. Book groups will eat this up. [See Prepub Alert, 7/18/11.]--Stacy Alesi, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., Boca Raton, FL

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2011
The author of Gods in Alabama (2005) offers up a mesmerizing tale of a family coping with the revelation of a secret that will change their lives. Just 15 years separates each generation of Slocumb women: at 45, Ginny has to take care of her headstrong 30-year-old daughter, Liza, a former drug addict who suffered a debilitating stroke, and Liza's 15-year-old daughter, Mosey, whom Ginny worries will end up pregnant, just as she and Liza did at that age. But Mosey couldn't be more different from Liza: she is gangly and awkward and terrified of getting pregnant, so much so that she constantly takes pregnancy tests despite the fact that she has never had sex. When Ginny has a local boy cut down Liza's favorite willow tree in the backyard to put in a pool for Liza's physical therapy, he discovers a small silver box hidden beneath it. The contents of this box rock the three Slocumb women to the core and threaten to undo the family Ginny has worked so hard to nurture. This is Jackson's most absorbing book yet, a lush, rich read with three very different but equally compelling characters at its core.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)