Night Ride Home

Two former lovers with a secret, a wedding, a mining disaster, and more intermingle in this novel of life in a tiny Alabama mining town

Covington ( Gathering Home ) uses a shared crisis to dramatize forgiveness in this multifaceted, absorbing tale, set in an Alabama mining town in December 1941. Pearl Harbor doesn't yet mean much to just-married 19-year-old Keller Hayes--he's far more worried that Bolivia, the local prostitute, will tell the townspeople that the child she's carrying is his, or that his father-in-law, Scotty, a mean drunk, will carry out his threat to shoot him. On Christmas Eve, when a mine wall collapses, trapping several men, Keller's fears shift to his father, a miner. Bolivia then becomes Keller's comforter rather than his enemy, and Scotty forsakes hatred for fellowship, discovering that he can go without a drink. The narrative centers on the three grim, suspenseful winter days during which the miners are caught below ground while their friends and families wait helplessly above. Although personality changes--such as Scotty's transformation from hillbilly alcoholic to concerned citizen--are implausibly sudden, Covington's deeply etched characters inspire readers' affection. The deftly paced, lyrical narrative is made all the more affecting by the looming shadow of WW II.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Alabama is the setting for Covington's third novel, as it was for Gathering Home (1988) and Bird of Paradise (1990). This one combines a coming-of-age story with a mining disaster and a Christmas miracle. It's late 1941, Pearl Harbor time. In a small mining town, two families are bracing for a difficult wedding. Nineteen-year-old Keller Hayes lives in a tiny company house with mine-worker father Ben Ray and mother Tess, a church-singer. Higher up the social scale are the Sandifers: filling-station owner Sandy, otherworldly wife Grace, and grease-monkey daughter Laura. The problem is Sandy, a mean drunk who's mighty sore at losing Laura to a miner's son and is threatening violence. Another worry for Keller is his unconventional mother's decision to invite Bolivia, the sweet- natured, gypsy-like town whore, who is pregnant; Keller suspects (correctly) that he's the father. But Bolivia's presence proves a godsend: she knows how to handle Scotty, another client, and literally disarms him. Keller competes with these characters (and Charles, the junkman who adores Bolivia) for the spotlight; then a mine wall collapses, killing some miners, trapping Ben Ray and others, and the disaster predominates. Covington shows, simplistically, how death energizes the living; even Sandy turns into a Good Samaritan, laying off the booze to help rescue his enemy Ben Ray, who emerges with a broken leg. Bolivia, though, is responsible for a greater miracle: After her baby is stillborn, black and white mourners come together at the funeral. That's a first. It's also a moment of excessive sweetness; all these people are just a little too good to be true, amiable lightweights, and this undercuts Covington's vision of a community bloody-but- unbowed. Decent work, then, but without much of a payoff. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.