Uke Rivers Delivers: Stories (Yellow Shoe Fiction) - Softcover

Smith, R. T.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807131873 ISBN 13: 9780807131879

Publisher: LSU Press, 2006

Synopsis

In the best tradition of southern storytelling, Uke Rivers Delivers features raconteurs as beguiling as the tales they tell. These lyrical, darkly humorous monologues portray a range of denizens of the American South desperately trying to come to grips with their inherited pasts. A Confederate reenactor receives a message from the beyond to lay to rest the remains of Stonewall Jackson's horse. A docent at Washington and Lee University's Lee Chapel offers prim instruction on the facts and legends about "the General" with both reverence and irony. The young son of a lewd, alcoholic, self-dubbed evangelist acquires the wits -- and the will -- for survival by protecting the family's sunflower crops. A midget ukulele virtuoso is so surprised by his own eruption into violence that he can attribute it only to genetics. One of Jeff Davis's fellow cross-dressers; the killer of John Wilkes Booth; a Rebel deserter whose superior exacts his pound of flesh -- all these characters and more, through their twisted and torn vernaculars, seek understanding and revival in R. T. Smith's superb collection.

About this title

About the Author

R. T. Smith 's fiction has been published in Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, Best American Mystery Stories, and two Pushcart Prize anthologies. He is the author of thirteen volumes of poetry and has received the Library of Virginia Poetry Award. Raised in Georgia and North Carolina, he now lives in Rockbridge County, Virginia. He is the editor of Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review.

Reviews

These 14 monologues are not so much short stories as Robert Browning–like soliloquies. In them, poet (Split the Lark) and Shenandoah editor Smith shows history dominating current Southern life. An obsessed Civil War re-enactor follows the bidding of the ghost of Stonewall Jackson, stealing the taxidermied remains of his horse in "Little Sorrel." Sybil Mildred Clemm Legrad Pascal, a docent at Lee Chapel of Washington and Lee University (the Virginia school where Shenandoah is based), offers her own views of the general's life. In the title story, a short ukelele player, Parham "Uke" Rivers, tells his eventful life story, which involves some dirty business with his driver and nurse-lover Sunny (whose "hospital costume in the bedroom was a special treat"), but which centers on his love for the lovely, departed Stella. Smith does a credible job with his various players' down-home diction, but their tics and concerns never coalesce into character, standing out like items in a curio shop. (Oct.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807131873
• ISBN 13: 9780807131879
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160