Little Gale Gumbo

August 15, 2011
Marks’s expansive but generic debut chronicles the lives and loves of young sisters Dahlia and Josie, who move with their mother, Camille, from New Orleans to Little Gale, an island off the Maine coast, to escape their abusive father, Charles Bergeron. In Little Gale, the trio make their home in Ben Haskell’s extra room. Ben and Camille fall in love while the girls befriend Ben’s son, Matthew. Josie, the younger sister and daddy’s girl, eagerly learns Camille’s gumbo recipes and voodoo rituals. Cynical older sister Dahlia cultivates an unhealthy attitude toward men that leads to promiscuity and breaking the heart of her high school sweetheart, Jack Thurlow. Josie yearns for Matthew, who yearns for Dahlia. Charles, usually dealing drugs or in prison, makes intermittent disruptive appearances on the island over the course of years, at one point giving Josie $12,000 to hold for him in secret. When Charles returns to Little Gale, he attacks Ben and lands him in a coma and gets himself killed, and past secrets threaten to disrupt everyone’s lives. Though densely plotted, the book moves at a snail’s pace, and the benevolent male characters prove indistinguishable.