Home Fires Burning

Cantankerous Jake Tibbetts, editor of the town newspaper, struggles to find meaning in a world he thought he understood, when the Second World War shakes the lives of everyone in his small Southern community

Inman's first novel is refreshing evidence of what storytelling by an artist can be. Readers will find themselves living intimately with the people in a small Southern town during World War II. Jake Tibbetts owns and edits the newspaper, inherited from his grandfather, a hero of the Confederacy. Stubborn and cranky, Jake, in his 60s, risks his cherished friendships, even his marriage, by stubbornly insisting on directing everyone else's behavior. Pastine, his wife, is more than a match for him, though, when Jake is wrong about important issues; and so is their young grandson Lonnie. He has lived with the Tibbettses since the death of his mother in a crash, for which Jake blamed and disinherited his son Henry, the daddy Lonnie can't remember. There's a pitched battle between Jake and Pastine when he finds she's been corresponding with Henry, a soldier in France. But this is only one event in a wonderfully funny, terribly sad, vital novel. Surprises and insights abound on every page of a book readers won't want to finish and won't soon forget.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Inman's ambitious and promising debut portrays life in a small, down-home Southern town during World War II, a time when impending change elicits idiosyncratic responses from previously insulated townspeople. Narrative attention circles around crotchety, third-generation newspaperman Jake Tibbetts, whose grandfather fought in the Civil War, and whose alcoholic and long unseen son Henry fights now in Belgium. Jake observes that problems arise when one generation attempts to mold the next, but takes the lesson to heart only after trouble with his own family. Inman tries very hard to make this book work, and for the most part he succeeds: harebrained incidents, wicked humor, and well-wrought prose more than counterbalance the occasional heavy hand, ragged phrase, and unoriginal theme. Somewhat flawed then, but a great beginning overall. Rex E. Klett, Anson Cty. Lib., Wadesboro, N.C.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.