A Sunday In June
Perry's haunting, impressive Stigmata (1998) told of a girl, Lizzie, institutionalized for her dangerous paranormal connection to her great-great-grandmother; her second novel reveals a similarly troubled relationship between Lizzie's grandmother, Grace, and the same spirit. In 1915, in Johnson Creek, Ala., 15-year-old Grace watches out for her two younger sisters, Mary Nell and Eva, whom folks say have second sight. Parents Frank (a Creek Indian) and Joy (daughter of a former slave) Mobley discourage such talk: their aspirations for their daughters involve good marriages and careers, not "hoodoo." Grace's own paranormal powers become apparent when she finds her grandmother Bessie's diary. She experiences a terrifying vision as she reads how Bessie came from Africa as a girl named Ayo, chained in the filthy bilge of a slave ship. As the years pass, the visitations-and their sometimes physical effects, like scars on Grace's wrist from a slave ship's manacles-continue. In 1921, Eva, barely 13, is raped by Mary Nell's ne'er-do-well husband, Lou Henry-an event that Mary Nell "sees" while sitting in church. Torn by conflicting loyalties and shamed that she remains barren while Eva carries the child she desperately wants, Mary Nell follows Eva and Grace to Tuskegee and steals Eva's infant son. Three years later, Mary Nell returns to Johnson Creek to raise the boy as her own. The novel's final section-spanning 1925-1963 in a series of truncated episodes-brings the younger sisters together again as troubled Grace forges her own path far away. Perry's novel repeats itself (and hearkens too much to its predecessor), but it's an absorbing read, a portrait of hard lives bravely lived.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.