Channeling Mark Twain

April 30, 2007
Occupying a seat on a Riker’s Island–bound bus crowded with menacing, diamond-studded pimps is just another day in the life of Holly Mattox, the self-consciously attractive newlywed protagonist of Muske-Dukes’s fourth novel. Set in 1970s New York City, the novel follows Holly as she becomes increasingly, and perhaps dangerously, involved with the female inmates who attend her jailhouse poetry workshops. Undeterred by the catty disapproval of her literary contemporaries, Holly forges on, leading a class of bickering inmates, including mentally disturbed Billie Dee, transgendered Gene/Jean, God-fearing Darlene and fragile, heavily sedated Polly Lyle Clement, who claims to be the great-granddaughter of Mark Twain. (Twain also, Polly claims, speaks through her.) An affair with fellow scribe Sam Glass threatens Holly’s young marriage as Polly gets thrown into solitary for her possible involvement in another inmate’s jailbreak. The jail administration wants Holly to extract information from a delusional Polly, but Polly could be crumbling too fast for Holly to save her. Prisoners’ poems appear throughout and afford a sometimes hilarious, sometimes stark look beneath the inmates’ grizzled exteriors. Fiction with a political conscience often sacrifices craft in favor of driving home a message, but Muske-Dukes pulls it off.

July 1, 2007
Poet/novelist Muske-Dukes's latest work of fiction (after "Dear Digby") follows a young, left-wing poet as she strives for social justice in the volatile atmosphere of New York City during the mid-1970s. Holly's life is complicated by entanglements with two very different men, by confusion about her political position, and most of all by the poetry workshop she teaches at the women's detention center on Rikers Island. Holly's consciousness about society and culture is raised by the diverse class population, particularly the amazing (and possibly insane) Polly Lyle Clement. Claiming descent from Mark Twain via his liaison with an African American beauty, Polly asserts that her famous ancestor communicates with her, which she demonstrates by falling into eerie trances and speaking in a male voice with a Southern accent. Holly's determination to help her disturbed student sends her into the dark and frightening worlds of prisoner abuse and racial discrimination, testing her ideals to the utmost. Based on the author's personal experience, this is an offbeat and stimulating story, marked by painterly images evoked through precise, energetic language. Recommended for most fiction collections.Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA

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