Take One Candle Light a Room

October 4, 2010
Straight's (A Million Nightingales) newest heroine, FX Antoine, keeps a distance from her family, her past, and even her present. Her one tie to home is her godson Victor, the child of her murdered best friend, whose involvement in a shooting sends him careening off the college path and potentially straight into a life of crime. He flees to Louisiana, where FX grew up, and is followed by her and her father, who wrestles with family secrets of his own. Their pursuit of Victor is marred by complications, not the least of which is the looming Hurricane Katrina, putting them all at risk. Straight again places readers in a rich and alien culture, a mélange of misfits and outlaws. FX is a detached protagonist, resisting her own family and culture, and readers will share her outsider's viewpoint. Straight's love of language is embedded in every page, though often at the expense of plot, and parts of the puzzle remain obscure in an otherwise rich and absorbing story.

September 15, 2010

In the bayou there are two kinds of people--those who stay and those who leave. That's what Fantine Antoine's father was told when he packed up his family, moving west to escape the cane fields and the constant danger facing a black man in 1950s Louisiana. Years later, Fantine, also a wanderer, yearns to leave her parents' California citrus groves. A facility with languages lands her an East Coast education, a hip apartment in L.A., a career as a noted travel writer, and not a little resentment back home in Rio Seco. When her godson Victor, a 22-year-old college kid about to make a life-altering choice, calls to ask if he can crash with her for a couple of days, Fantine demurs, not realizing that Victor is asking her to save him. That fateful decision ensnares Fantine in a family drama steeped in a history of slavery, rape, and murder, taking her on a cross-country journey of self-discovery. VERDICT National Book Award finalist Straight (Highwire Moon) has created a vivid portrait of a mixed-race family, proud yet haunted by the vagaries of the past, and of a woman and a boy trying to bridge two worlds. This is also a novel about the importance of words. Straight beautifully blends the rhythmic cadence of the Creole patois with the down-and-dirty slang of the street. With its compelling story, menacing atmosphere, and exquisite use of language, this book has something to intrigue most readers. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/10.]--Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Ft. Myers, FL

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2010
For some, despite passage of time or change of location, the past is very much alive. Such is the case for Fantine, a travel writer living in L.A., worlds apart from Rio Seco, the community she grew up in only an hour east. Even while roaming the globe and with skin so light that she can pass for Argentinean. Or Andalusian. Maybe a tanned Angeleno, Fantine is, and will always be, African American. On the fifth anniversary of the death of Glorette, the past comes rushing back. In luscious prose, author Straight expertly captures the complexities of Fantines identity. Having broken with her family to live in the city, Fantine straddles two worlds; now a tourist in her family home, she dresses and speaks different than her peers. As hurricane Katrina brews in the Gulf, a family crisis sends Fantine back to Rio Seco and then on to Louisiana, where, in 1958, her and Glorettes mothers fled to escape a serial rapist who felt entitled to black girls, and where, generations earlier, Moinette, an ancestor, lived as a slave, as depicted in A Million Nightingales (2006).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)