Flying Shoes, the delicious first novel from Lisa Howorth (co-founder of Square Books in Oxford, Miss.), parses a chaotic week in the life of Mary Byrd Thornton, a scatterbrained mother of two. Unsettled by a call from a Richmond, Va., police detective wanting to reopen the decades-old unsolved murder of Mary Byrd's young stepbrother, she must revisit that event just as a freak ice storm rattles through her bucolic Mississippi college town. Planes are grounded, roads are iced over, her husband, Charles, is late returning from a business trip, and her would-be lover and would-be novelist friend, Jack, campaigns for her to meet him at a local bar. Her handyman is too hopped up to drive the icy roads, so her only safe ride to Richmond is with a long-haul trucker dispatched by her always-reliable gay friend, Hubard Mann Valentine, Jr.
This may sound like the makings of some kind of Southern gothic nightmare, and in many ways it is. However, in Howorth's able hands, it's more Barry Hannah than Larry Brown--more funny, character-driven storytelling with crackling dialogue than whiskey-fueled violence and mayhem. She gets Charles and Mary Byrd's marriage down cold, but also has a keen ear for handyman Teever's earthy vernacular and carousing Jack's cynicism.
The title comes both from a Townes Van Zandt song and from Mary Byrd's son's fascination with the winged sandals of Roman god Mercury--"if you didn't like something, or something bad happened, you would just fly away." Mary Byrd knows better: you can't fly away from your troubles, your family tree or your Delta roots. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.