The first thing you see when you begin Local Souls is a rough map of Falls, N.C., the setting for Allan Gurganus's thoroughly enjoyable collection of three novellas. Start top left, at Falls High: In "Fear Not," our narrator is watching his godson perform in the school musical when a very un-Falls-like couple sits next to him--handsome, confident, "lion-kingly." He must find out all about them. A year later, the resulting tale includes a decapitated head and a 14-year-old girl who gets pregnant by the owner of the motorboat that killed her father and gives up the baby.
For "Saints Have Mothers," we move to the bottom of the map to read about the Mulray family. Caitlin's proud mom tells us she's "one amazing little girl" who gives her mother's shoes to the poor and her school lunches to hungry kids. As a teenager, she goes to Africa, then her mother receives a call: Caitlin is missing, believed dead. What Gurganus does with this very twisting tale about a mother's love echoes the literary revelations of the great interior monologue poets.
Next, in "Decoy," we go to Riverside, the best neighborhood, and Doc Roper's house. Doc's retiring, but something much bigger is coming to Falls--the "smaller the town, the bigger the event looms." This last novella is a powerful inquiry into fathers and carved ducks.
Here are finely rendered portraits--and, behind the faces, fascinating stories. Listen to the voices, so pitch perfect, the words, oh so readable. And Falls, home to the fallen; it's on the map. Come visit. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher