Flying Shoes: A Novel
On the eve of an important meeting with a semi-important photographer her art-­gallery-owner husband is courting, Mary Byrd Thornton gets word that her presence is required in Richmond, Virginia, to meet with detectives who have new theories about the decades-old case of her stepbrother’s murder. The trouble is, Mary Byrd lives in Mississippi, hates to fly, and needs to get out of town before an early spring ice storm shuts everything down. While exploring her various transportation options, including driving with Teever, a down-and-out Vietnam vet, or Jack Ernst, her sometime drug dealer and wannabe lover, Mary Byrd must also organize her household—her ­attitude-enhanced teenage daughter, Eliza; her space-geeky son, William; and her mostly absent husband, Charles—to function in her absence. And she’ll have to do so without the help of her help, Evagreen, whose own daughter has just murdered her husband. It’s all par for the course in the secretive, volatile Deep South for Howorth, who mined a tragic episode from her own personal history as dark inspiration for this buzz-worthy debut. --Carol Haggas