Published 6th May 2022 by Friday Press.
From the cover of the book:
More than a literary thriller.Powerful men can get away with murder...for only so long.
After a life of hardship, Mary Jane McCord's life in Rapid City, South Dakota, finally hits a sweet spot. She finds happiness and her singing career takes off. Everything is looking up until she uncovers the dark and secret obsessions of two high-profile men.
Twenty years pass but the people closest to Mary Jane have not forgotten.
Will they bring the truth out into the light?
***********
Souls Wax Fair is a complex story that starts with a portentous visit to a fortune teller and then spins out over time, building to a tragedy that is hushed up by some morally corrupt and powerful men who believe they can get away with murder... But can they?
It all starts with Mary Jane McCord's life in Rapid City, South Dakota, where a hard start finally begins to bring the rewards of a longed for singing career. Fame and fortune seem on the way, but fate takes a turn when Mary Jane gets involved with the dark little secrets of two high-profile men.
In the years that follow we come to know all the hows, whys and wherefores around what happens to Mary Jane, through sundry narratives from multiple characters connected with her and the men whose secret vices seal her fate. Twenty years pass, and those with long memories still hanker after revenge, but can these untouchable pillars of the community be brought to justice?
The first part of the book follows the life of Mary Jane, and is rich in the dreams and sorrows of a young girl on the cusp of womanhood, living a hard life with a single-mother who is more concerned with her string of lovers than the welfare of her daughter. When Mary Jane comes to learn the truth about the identity of her father, it sets her on a path, via some surreal twists, that eventually leads to marriage with an older man and a blossoming music career. But sadly, the prophesy that the fortune teller made years before about her not making old bones comes to pass with a violent end. I really enjoyed this part of the tale, and Creighton writes beautifully of life in South Dakota and its people, and if I didn't know better I would have sworn she was born and bred there - the atmosphere and small town vibes that flood this more coming-of-age part of the novel are very impressive, making a compelling literary fiction story with the undercurrent of a thriller.
The story then burgeons into an orgy of narratives from multiple points of view, that move back and forth in time. Although I can see exactly why Creighton brings in each and every one of these characters to take the story forward to the reckoning she has planned for the guilty parties, for me there are just too many voices vying for attention and the story gets a bit bogged down because of this. You are not sure why this glut of information is necessary until much later in the story, and you find yourself going back over sections to work out exactly who is speaking and what this information adds to the whole. I did struggle with this part of the book, as there was just too much going on for me to see an easy path through to what follows. The story loses its focus and direction and I think a little pruning would have kept the pace going better. However, if you can keep up, the latter parts of the book return to the thriller theme, and do have a few satisfying surprises.
Despite the need to concentrate hard on this book, there are nuggets gold in them there hills if you search them out. Creighton covers a lot of ground here and brings in a myriad of themes in the process, including small town life, hard beginnings, poverty, abuse, discrimination, race, crime, corruption, and control... always control... building the whole piece into an examination of the fallacy of the American Dream. The clue lies in the title, which if I am correct (thank you Google) comes from a lesser known verse of an early version of America the Beautiful, as follows:
O beautiful for halcyon skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the enameled plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
Till souls wax fair
as earth and air
And music-hearted sea!
Well America the Beautiful this certainly is not, and the way in which Creighton weaves the story to show the harsh truth about life in South Dakota, and the gulf that lies between rich and poor, privileged and under-privileged, and those with power and those who are controlled, is actually pretty thought provoking.
This is not an easy read, and it does tackle some difficult subjects, but if you like them on the rambling and unstructured side, with lots of deep themes to be ferreted out of literary prose, then you are sure to find it a rewarding challenge.
Souls Wax Fair is available to buy now in ebook and paperback formats.
Thank you to Kelly Creighton for sending me an ecopy of this book in return for an honest review, and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the author:
She is the author of the DI Harriet Sloane series, two standalone crime novels (Souls Wax Fair and The Bones of It), two short fiction collections (Bank Holiday Hurricane and Everybody's Happy), and one book of poetry.
Kelly lives with her family in County Down, Northern Ireland.
Find out more about Kelly via her website HERE.
No comments:
Post a Comment