Opening in 1978, as 26-year-old narrator Taylor Wakefield lies in a hospital bed recovering from a mysterious hand injury, McCown's oddball, entertaining and somewhat improbable third novel (after The Member-Guest
and War Memorials
) promptly flashes back 15 years to the moment that changed everything for Taylor. Two days before the Civil Rights march into Washington, D.C., Taylor sees his evil older cousin, Billy Hatcher, gun down a black bootlegger outside of Birmingham, Ala. Terrified into silence, Taylor buries himself in his studies and soon finds himself competing in the National Spelling Bee against a beautiful Florida 12-year-old. He loses (tellingly, on the word "responsibility"), but parlays his finish into a brief career as the Sugar-Puffs Kid on a radio call-in show. A few years pass, and Taylor's mom splits, leaving him with an ineffectual dad who fantasizes about becoming the next Arnold Palmer; a few more years pass, and Taylor graduates from college and Billy resurfaces as a born-again Christian lawyer. The leading candidate for Alabama attorney general, Billy has just pinned the bootlegger's murder on a dead white supremacist. Driven finally to act, Taylor takes the story to a local fourth-rate TV station, where, as the new weatherman, he begins a campaign to bring his cousin to a long-overdue comeuppance and tame the girl who outspelled him. Here the tale is at its most interesting, but perhaps its least credible. Agent, Emilie Jacobson. (Sept.)
