Perry is a careful storyteller, and the novel is well crafted. She has a gift for dialect; her characters speak simply and naturally, and their voices change as they age and as their circumstances change. Perry tenderly conveys the closeness of the small "colored" (to use the parlance of the day and the author's description) community of Johnson Creek, and the affection of the Mobleys for each other is palpable. She writes easily of the everyday, the commonplace: "The porch was barely cooler than the sunny yard, but that was where the Mobley women sat, where they always sat, their hands full of something that must be done, must be sewn, beaten, shelled, crocheted, cleaned, knitted." — Audrey Niffenegger
Distinctive dialogue, evocative prose, and themes that encompass the legacy, Perry continues the mesmerizing story of the Mobley family.
Phyllis Perry's characters wrap themselves around your heart.
Detroit News & Free Press
Perry's haunting, impressive Stigmata (1998) told of a girl, Lizzie, institutionalized for her dangerous paranormal connection to her great-great-grandmother; her second novel reveals a similarly troubled relationship between Lizzie's grandmother, Grace, and the same spirit. In 1915, in Johnson Creek, Ala., 15-year-old Grace watches out for her two younger sisters, Mary Nell and Eva, whom folks say have second sight. Parents Frank (a Creek Indian) and Joy (daughter of a former slave) Mobley discourage such talk: their aspirations for their daughters involve good marriages and careers, not "hoodoo." Grace's own paranormal powers become apparent when she finds her grandmother Bessie's diary. She experiences a terrifying vision as she reads how Bessie came from Africa as a girl named Ayo, chained in the filthy bilge of a slave ship. As the years pass, the visitations and their sometimes physical effects, like scars on Grace's wrist from a slave ship's manacles continue. In 1921, Eva, barely 13, is raped by Mary Nell's ne'er-do-well husband, Lou Henry an event that Mary Nell "sees" while sitting in church. Torn by conflicting loyalties and shamed that she remains barren while Eva carries the child she desperately wants, Mary Nell follows Eva and Grace to Tuskegee and steals Eva's infant son. Three years later, Mary Nell returns to Johnson Creek to raise the boy as her own. The novel's final section spanning 1925-1963 in a series of truncated episodes brings the younger sisters together again as troubled Grace forges her own path far away. Perry's novel repeats itself (and hearkens too much to its predecessor), but it's an absorbing read, a portrait of hard lives bravely lived. (Feb.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
This sequel to Stigmata follows the granddaughters of former slave Ayo in the early 20th-century South. Much to the dismay of their parents, Joy and Frank, who want the girls to abandon the "old ways" and move up in the world, each has inherited a psychic gift. Grace has visions of her grandmother's world, which leaves her with slavery's physical stigmata (e.g., manacle scrapes on her wrists and ankles), while Mary Nell and Eva experience premonitions and glimpses of the future that they can only interpret together. Even as children, they knew that Lou Henry would cause them trouble. When Mary Nell marries him anyway, his brutality causes a rift with Eva, rendering them helpless against the future. The legacy of slavery and racism-leading to a cycle of poverty and abuse that continues from one generation to the next-is aptly portrayed here. Unfortunately, the unremitting sense of sorrow and impending doom, combined with confusing psychic events and abrupt setting changes, makes for difficult reading. Octavia Butler's Kindred is a clearer treatment of a similar subject. Recommended for libraries specializing in African American literature.-Jennifer S. Baker, Seattle P.L. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Second-novelist Perry (Stigmata, 1998) follows the fortunes and travails of an upwardly mobile African-American clan across much of the country and most of the 20th century. The saga opens in Johnson Creek, Alabama, in the early 1900s, when rural blacks live in a segregated world immensely harsher but in some ways far richer than that of their white neighbors. Frank and Joy Mobley are an unusual couple in many ways: Frank is an American Indian of the Creek tribe; Joy is the daughter of a woman born in Africa who lived most of her life as a slave. With 70 acres of good farmland and two houses, the Mobleys are quite well off by the standards of their black neighbors, and they have high expectations for their three daughters, Grace, Mary Nell, and Eva. But fate has a way of interfering. All three girls turn out to possess "the sight": they're given to visions, dreams, and aural hallucinations that offer them glimpses of the future. Frank and Joy do their best to discourage their daughters' belief in what they see as an embarrassing peasant superstition Joy's mother brought over from Africa, but the girls soon find themselves called upon for advice and prophecies and develop a small cult following in the region. Domestic life in a family of clairvoyants can be difficult, however, as Mary Nell discovers when she "sees" Eva being raped by her husband. Unable to bear children of her own, she counsels her sister to go through with the resulting pregnancy-and steals the baby boy after he's born. The siblings break up, reunite, and part again over the years, eventually making peace after a great deal of turmoil and heartbreak. The gift of the sight binds them in the end-to each other and to theirancestors. Despite an unwieldy narrative and overly intricate plot: an extremely readable and interesting portrait of a lost time and place.
