The Keepers of Echowah - Hardcover

Sammons, Sonny

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0877972699 ISBN 13: 9780877972693

Publisher: Cherokee Pub, 1995

Synopsis

Chronicles the coming of age of orphaned twin brothers raised in Georgia by their eccentric uncle

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

This smooth and charming first novel about twin boys growing up in Georgia in the 1940s has a lovely balance of lyrical nostalgia and gleefully coarse humor. It is narrated by Matty MacDonald in one of those distinctive Southern voices that creates color on the page. He and his brother Patty are twins whose mother died giving birth to them and whose father committed suicide shortly afterward. The boys are raised on a 15,000-acre South Georgia hunting property named Ecowah Plantation by their delightfully eccentric Uncle Charlie, who gives up his carefree bachelor life to accept the responsibility. Much of the story deals with the boys' turbulent teens, during which Matty discovers, among other things, that ``Vicks VapoRub makes no allowance for stupidity: it will definitely take the skin off the penis of a 13-year-old boy.'' He also discovers love and lust and sex, all in the person of the stunning Leighanne Carter, while Patty, the older (by eight minutes) and by far the more ornery of the two, finds trouble in all the usual places. Some of the characters (the colonel who owns Ecowah; the noble black men and women who work there) are perhaps just a bit too trite and could have been pulled from a how-to manual for writing idyllic Southern fiction, but Sammons's easy storytelling covers most of the bumps. He faithfully cuts his sweetness with tonics. Matty's sentimental voice is relieved by Patty's ribaldry, and the whole story is strung between the end of WWII and Vietnam, where the brothers lose their youthful innocence. Film rights to Media Tribe/Destiny Force Productions.

Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this bittersweet reminiscence of love and growth, first-time novelist Sammons writes poetically about the hunting plantation in south Georgia that was home to twins Patty and Matty MacDonald from their birth in 1944 through adolescence. With compassion and humor, Sammons traces the boys' milestone experiences and episodes involving school, first love, first drivers' licenses, and, finally, basic training and action in Vietnam. Separated from his brother by death after 20 years, Matty acknowledges the value of what key people in his life have taught him. Thankful for their influence, he prepares to take his place in the life-cycle continuum. This novel will evoke personal reflection long after readers turn the last page; recommended for most collections.
Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, Md.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cherokee Pub
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0877972699
• ISBN 13: 9780877972693
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 238
• Editor: Selph Alexa M.