cover image TRUE HOPE

TRUE HOPE

Frank Manley, . . Carroll & Graf, $25 (320pp) ISBN 978-0-7867-1020-1

The gifted Manley (The Cockfighter) once again exhibits his formidable ability to evoke the lives of the down-and-out in the Deep South. After spending two years in a Georgia prison for assault and battery, Al Cantrell is a free man again, taking up residency in the Bubba Jones House of Hope. Obsessing over his dead wife and struggling to stay sober in AA, he saves enough money to buy a beat-up car and moves in with Tom, his wife's father. A septuagenarian veteran of the Korean War, Tom is employed as a gofer for Benny, a shady county commissioner. Al is hired to paint houses for Benny and is eventually sent to help Tom evict an itinerant couple renting one of the properties, but Tom goes berserk and torches the house, so Benny gives Al the responsibility of keeping the older man in line. With Annie Laurie—a woman who has turned to prostitution while trying to regain her infant daughter from the custody of her former in-laws—Al finally begins to find solace from his obsessive grief for his dead wife. But everything goes awry when she and Al concoct an ill-fated scheme to rescue Annie Laurie's baby and head for Arizona. Al's narration, infused with plenty of wry humor and sadly lyrical beauty, provides much-needed relief from the strange and bleak events he describes. (May)

Forecast: The Cockfighter was a 1998 best book selection by both the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, which should assure that Manley's latest gets ample review attention. Regional sales will be strongest, but Manley is gradually building up a national reputation.