A young man leaves his Mississippi home to search for his family's legacy in 1950s Mexico in Morris's powerful but derivative debut novel, which echoes Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing
in both style and story line. After serving six years for a murder he didn't commit, Jo Shelby Ferguson returns to the plantation town where he used to live and where he has a job offer from the plantation owner as well as romantic opportunity with the man's daughter. But when he discovers a collection of letters written by his great-great-grandmother, chronicling the Mexican adventures of his namesake, a 19th-century general whose "new little south" colony was destroyed by the Juaristas in 1866, he decides to journey to Mexico to find the hacienda that the letters promised would be the family's refuge. He's imprisoned again, though, when the Mexican police discover him carrying a family artifact, an ancient ball-and-powder gun that doesn't even fire. Ferguson's battle to outlast the brutal Mexican prison authorities is a familiar story, but he receives some intriguing assistance from a fellow inmate named Ramon Garcia, a former professor and landowner who helps arrange his freedom and then steers him toward a meeting with Garcia's mother and his beautiful daughter, both of whom help Ferguson in his quest. That quest makes for a truly memorable literary journey, with Morris combining a strong plot with first-rate characters and some elegiac writing about the link between families, the land and its history. The parallels to McCarthy are so noticeable that they rob the book of its uniqueness, but Morris's obvious talent shines through from start to finish. (May)
Forecast:With a 50,000-copy first printing, a $50,000 marketing budget and a 20-city author tour, Context is pulling out all the stops for this debut. Morris has exceptional promise, and a sophomore effort less beholden to McCarthy could earn him much praise. Southern readers will recognize Morris as the former host of the talk show
The Doctor Is In, while literary magazine fans will know his name from the
Delta Review and other publications. This title has the potential to be Context's biggest book to date.
