Waiting for April - Hardcover

Morris, Scott M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565123700 ISBN 13: 9781565123700

Publisher: Algonquin Books, 2003

Synopsis

On a stormy night in 1965, a man carrying a suitcase holding army discharge papers and a Bronze Star strode into the little town of Citrus, Florida, and changed everything. He called himself Sanders Collier and said he was the son of a prominent family of South Carolina gentry. He was handsome and cunning, and people believed him.

Within a few years he would be dead, shot in what would always be called a hunting accident. Who was hunting what was never clear to his son, left behind to make sense of a town split apart by the things his father had done. But when Roy grows into the spitting image of his father, the unspoken agreement to keep buried the old resentments about the past comes undone.

What follows for this family is the unraveling of every lie, half-truth, self-delusion, and wishful thought on which they had built their lives since the arrival of Sanders Collier. Only after the selfless sacrifice of one very odd, profane, saintly man does Roy finally understand what happened the night his father died.

Set in the lush, fertile world of the Florida panhandle, WAITING FOR APRIL is a complex, funny, sometimes dark story. When the Oxford American said Scott Morris's first book was a harbinger of even greater things, this is the book they were talking about.

About this title

About the Author

Scott M. Morris is a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Oxford American, among others. He teaches at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi, and is the author of the acclaimed debut novel The Total View of Taftly.

Reviews

Sanders Royce Collier arrives in the backwater Florida panhandle town of Citrus on Christmas Eve, 1965, to the accompaniment of portentous thunder and lightning. This second novel by Morris (The Total View of Taftly) is narrated by Sanders's teenage son, Roy, who pieces together the history of his father's fateful entanglement with Citrus's Lanier family. Sanders arrived saying he was a South Carolina blueblood recently discharged from Vietnam. He made a splash in the humble town, marrying a local woman named June Lanier. June had social aspirations and was proud of Sanders's supposedly distinguished background, but Sanders soon fell in love with her stunning younger sister, April, who, though sensitive and spirited, was resolutely trailer trash. Less than 10 years after he came to town, Sanders died in what everyone called a hunting accident. Roy, who was seven when his father died, doesn't know about any of this, but he himself develops an infatuation with April. His alarmed family tries to head off disaster by telling him about Sanders's obsession, which involves startling and ugly revelations about Sanders's true identity and his death. There is no shortage of plot twists, though the retrospective narration tends to flatten the drama. More compromising is that April, the novel's fulcrum, whose beauty and charm are frequently reiterated, never quite comes to life. In general, Morris does too much telling and not enough showing when it comes to his characters' development, and the novel suffers for it in spite of his fine ear for prose and dialogue.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Morris has been compared to John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces, 1987) and, ahem, Mark Twain. Morris' second novel isn't Huck Finn, but it's very good just the same. The opening set piece is a beauty, full of humor and foreboding. On a December afternoon in 1965, a well-dressed stranger strides into a little town in Florida's panhandle. It is Christmas Eve, and a storm has sent the downtown manger scene flying--"even Baby Jesus went M.I.A." The arrival of the man calling himself Sanders Royce Collier has a similar effect on then-14-year-old April Lanier and the small cadre of townspeople who greet him. However, the charismatic young fellow with the cuff links and the mohair jacket is not at all what he seems. It will ruin none of the suspense of this thoughtfully plotted novel to say that many of the folks of Citrus, Florida, will never be quite the same. In the tradition of his southern predecessors, Morris is an elegant, self-assured writer. His characters are authentic and overflowing with humanity. A genuinely evocative novel. Kevin Canfield
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1565123700
• ISBN 13: 9781565123700
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352