Blind Tongues - Softcover

Swinford, Fla., is a small town populated with stock characters, among them the novel's protagonist, Merelene Durham. She is an abandoned wifeand a survivor: the self-taught, indispensable secretary to and lover of the town lawyer. Then Merelene's husband, Mayfield, returns to Swinford a self-made millionaire and tries to reclaim his family. But their oldest son is fighting in Vietnam, and their youngest, Roland, the brain-damaged victim of a childhood bout of encephalitis, has been forcibly committed to a state mental institution (on a premise readers will find unbelievable). Merelene's lifeand much of the novelis too frequently described rather than simply shown. Watson ( Weep No More , The Calling ) offers an often clumsy narrative overwrought with poetics that fluctuate between country-western artiness ("I feel your fingers on the strings of my nerves") and very occasional moments of charm ("She felt her heart gather pace, and told it, slow down, but it was the heart that had always galloped at the mention of Mayfield's name, and it did not obey her").
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A fine talent for storytelling, faultless command of language, and perfect sense of character, place, and time are brought together in a compelling novel that probes the meaning of love at many levels. Merelene Durham has lived quietly since her husband deserted her 15 years earlier, working for the local lawyer and rearing her sons--Bull who is serving in Vietnam, and Roland who is mentally retarded--in the backwater town of Swinford, Florida. Merelene's confidence is shaken when Roland is taken from her and placed in a state home; and anxiety is heightened by her husband's return and pressure from the lawyer to marry him. The all-consuming love of a mother for a handicapped child is analyzed through Merelene's relationship with her sons, her husband, and the lawyer, as she reviews the past seeking guidance for the future. A touching story.
- Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. at Carbondale Lib.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.