Baby Todd and the Rattlesnake Stradivarius - Hardcover

Kennedy, Teresa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312005636 ISBN 13: 9780312005634

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1987

Synopsis

A kaleidoscopic tale set in the South in which Mary Faith Beaudine acquires a rare violin by shady means, Elijah Purdue in turn inherits the Stradivarius, Icy Fee Moulder adds a rattle to it, and Boo Strait grads the fiddle and runs

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Baby Todd isn't a baby at all but a sweet and oft-wed senior citizen of Atlantis, Texas. She's the sister of Iris Lee Strait, recent widow and purse-lipped matriarch of a family that also belies its name. Numbered among the Straits are Charles T., whose wife Grace left him 20 years earlier to both seek and render salvation in Latin America, and their three grown children, rock singer Davey, Grace, who has just left her husband in New York, and the mute, fiddle-playing Boo. How Boo gets his hands on the 18th century violin with the dried rattles from a snake inside is the subject of this spirited, earthy tale. Interspersed in the narration of the Straits' lives following the death of Ray Ed, Iris Lee's husband, the Strad is traced through the hands of its various owners, beginning with an also-mute maiden lady in Louisiana who stole the instrument from her violin instructor when he left her bed. By turns given and stolen to an assortment of fiddlers, the violin helped a revivalist preacher bring souls to God, though he lost his own to a skinny mountain girl who would gain skills in conjuring and live longer than she needed. Later it would lie in the wardrobe of a lovesick undertaker who embalmed the preacher's grandson, first husband of Baby Todd and true love of Iris Lee. Vigorous, raunchy and wise, Kennedy's family saga arranges the truths of death and betrayal with the magic of love and music into a foot-stomping country symphony.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A rare violin, obtained from its original owner by deceitful means in 1840, is the focal point of this tale of Southern life spanning nearly 150 years. The violin, with its neck shortened by two inches and a rattlesnake rattle inside it to ward off spiders, is easily identifiable; yet, when the story opens it has been lost for two generations. The violin's history, as it is developed through flashbacks, suggests occult influences at work in its behalf. In fact, its reappearance on Baby Sheba Todd's doorstep after 40 years begins another string of events that lend further credence to the occult theory. The book is an intriguing tale of conjure women, faith healers, tarnished Southern belles, mystics, child evangelists, and assorted ghosts and ghouls. The reading public will not want to miss it. Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. at Carbondale Lib.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0312005636
• ISBN 13: 9780312005634
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 343