Reviews

The lucid stories in Susan Lehmann's Southern Lies and Homicides are deceptively forthright. and move along at a steady pace holding one's interest and sparking imagination. Whether recounting tangled lives pursuing the coldly determined ruin of others or the convoluted journeys to tragically inevitable resolution, Lehmann's narratives are devoid of sentimentality, or the purple language invited by the often unseemly facts. Yet gradually, a humanity emerges built upon the salient details that fleetingly, but movingly expose deep sorrows and lifetimes of never having a chance. It's not always the guilty who stand convicted in the more poignant stories. Profound and longstanding poverty, a justice system that layers itself over a community's life, compounding harm rather than relieving it, people living almost next door to redeeming possibilities that never materialize, like ships in the night, these are the elements in her more compelling stories. Each tale is a brush with some forlorn aspect of Americana. We can count ourselves lucky to be on the outside looking in.