Book Review: *Going Down South* by Bonnie J. Glover

Going Down South by Bonnie J. Glover

Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same.

(Pearl S. Buck, 1892-1973)

Publisher’s Synopsis:  When fifteen-year-old Olivia Jean finds herself in the “family way,” her mother, Daisy, who has never been very maternal, springs into action. Daisy decides that Olivia Jean can’t stay in New York and whisks her away to her grandmother’s farm in Alabama to have the baby–even though Daisy and her mother, Birdie, have been estranged for years. When they arrive, Birdie lays down the law: Sure, her granddaughter can stay, but Daisy will have to stay as well. Though Daisy is furious, she has no choice.

Now, under one little roof in the 1960s Deep South, three generations of spirited, proud women are forced to live together. One by one, they begin to lose their inhibitions and share their secrets. And as long-guarded truths emerge, a baby is born–a child with the power to turn these virtual strangers into a real, honest-to-goodness family.

Going Down South is a wonderfully satisfying novel that explores the themes of mother-daughter relationships, racism, and the definition and role of fathers.  Author Bonnie J. Glover writes such colorful descriptions of people and places that I found myself torn between slowing down to enjoy her language and speeding ahead to follow the plot as it evolved through the present and a series of flashbacks.

Set in 1960, the novel is divided into four sections; each of the first three centers around the story of one of the female main characters, the fourth illustrates their new definition of “family”.  We start in Brooklyn with Olivia Jean, a studious 15-year-old who pines for the affection of her father, Turk, and is jealous of the care Turk shows to her mother (Daisy), who has always seemed distant to Olivia Jean.  When Olivia Jean finds herself “in the family way”, Daisy decides to send her down to Cold Water Springs, Alabama, to stay with Daisy’s own mother, Birdie Abernathy.  Daisy hasn’t seen Birdie since she herself left Alabama for New York fifteen years earlier; this, too, has been a stained mother-daughter relationship.  In this first section I felt extreme empathy for Olivia Jean, both for the lack of her mother’s affection and attention, and for the circumstances of her pregnancy.

Immediately upon starting the second section, focusing on Daisy’s story, Glover’s fine writing had me empathizing now with Daisy.  Again, Part Three: Birdie showed another valid perspective on the family dynamic.  Each daughter is resentful of the woman who raised her, feeling that she fell short of what a mother should be; each mother, in turn, feels that she has done her very best for her daughter; Daisy thinks:

She had not seen Birdie since that last time … and now her stomach heaved and she was unsettled as they made their way toward the little house.  She wished there had been some other way for her to help Olivia Jean besides binding her to the crazy woman who had birthed her but never took the time to rear her.

Olivia Jean is no longer an innocent school-girl and has joined her own mother and grandmother in the cult of motherhood.  She understands that her life has changed in an instant:

How could minutes have changed her life, made it so that she had to leave her family, her friends, and her home?  But she had to face up to the fact that the little time in the closet with Preston did change everything.  And there was no going back to the road and trying to get things right by choosing the other way.

Olivia Jean is hustled away by her mother, who wishes only to protect her daughter from the prying eyes of neighbors and the pointing fingers and giggles of classmates at school.  Daisy carries the ruse to Alabama, supplying Olivia Jean with a wedding band as subterfuge.  Whisked away from her Brooklyn neighborhood of block parties and familar faces, Olivia Jean ventures back to her mother’s childhood home, one Daisy was eager to leave so many years ago.  Cold Water Springs is a lonely place for this teenager thrust into adulthood; she takes comfort in truly getting to know her mother and grandmother and the quiet (and sometimes not-so-quiet!) routines of their home.

Intermingled between the dominant motif of the women exploring their relationships and discovering anew their roles toward each other, are more subtle threads touching on the absent fathers and the role race (and variations of skin color) play in their lives.

Bonnie J. Glover’s debut novel was the well-received The Middle Sister (2005), which I will be picking up to read soon!.  My One World/Ballantine paperback copy of Going Down South is part of the Random House Reader’s Circle series, including “a conversation with Bonnie J. Glover” and reading group discussion questions in the back of the book.  You can read the interview, discussion guide, and an excerpt from the first chapter online.  There’s a great interview with Bonnie J. Glover and Dr. Alvin Jones at the author’s website (scroll down a bit to the video screen).

Many thanks to Bonnie J. Glover for sending me a review copy of Going Down South.

On an aside, I am intrigued by the concept of Birdie laying out a condition under which she’ll keep Olivia Jean through her pregnancy.  I recently read Samuel Shem’s The Spirit of the Place, in which a mother’s will required her wandering son to live in his hometown for “one year and thirteen days” in order to keep his inheritance.  The condition is integral to the story in each case; I think it’s a very clever groundwork on which to base a novel.  Are there others you’d recommend with a similar construct?

Click here to order *Going Down South* from amazon.
Click here to order from your choice of IndieBound independent bookstores.