By Larry Brown (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, $26.95)
This nearly completed novel represents the final work of the self-taught Mississippi author who died in late 2004 at age 53. A former firefighter who flunked English, Larry Brown gained legions of fans and enormous respect for his brutally honest yet sympathetic depiction of the "rough South." That was the same title given to a documentary film about him and his work in 2002.
In this novel, Brown masterfully depicts complex characters that draw us bone-marrow deep into their plights. Three in particular will stay with me. Heartbreakingly hopeful in the beginning and then cunningly cynical by story's end, Jimmy, 9, lives in a trailer with his family, including his daddy. Given no name, this no-account father is a beer-guzzling, ego-absorbed whiner, able to rationalize even the most heinous of his despicable behaviors. Then there is former Klansman Cortez Sharp, a farmer who wields the pleasure of hard work and the prospect of a fishing pond like a shield against his guilt over a long-ago act.
Shannon Ravenel, Larry Brown's Algonquin editor, carefully whittled the 710-page manuscript. She chose to leave the ending unwritten but included the author's notes about his plans for the final segment. "For me, and I hope for you, it doesn't really matter that A Miracle of Catfish wasn't quite completed," the editor writes. "His characters--those real people--live on, just as he intended." Indeed, the miracles Brown brought to life reside in me now for all time. --Nancy Dorman-Hickson
