Natchez, Miss., in 1933 was going through what every Southern town was facing after the Civil War: attempting to pick up the pieces and somehow come out intact. In the new novel “New Mercies,’ the South is still trying to recover while wallowing in denial. Its people, still holding to their pride, want to believe they still are what they once were, but the plantation owners will never have the stature they previously enjoyed.
Denver’s Sandra Dallas, author of “The Persian Pickle Club,’ “Buster Midnight’s Caf ‘ and “Alice’s Tulips,’ usually writes about the Midwest. In “New Mercies,’ however, she has chosen the South and sets the story years after the “war of northern aggression.’
Most of Natchez’s previously elite pretend they haven’t lost their fortunes. Speaking about the late Amalia Bondurant, though summing up the South, one character says: “The gown was water-stained and there were mildew spots, and the pearls were dull, but we arranged the dress in the coffin so that you couldn’t see how badly damaged it was.’
Nora Bondurant is an outsider to everything Southern. In fact, to Southerners she is just a Yankee. To Nora, the southerners are backward. She has left Colorado for Natchez to take possession of an estate named Avoca that her aunt bequeathed her. The estate is not as stately as it is dilapidated.
Amalia, Nora’s aunt, was a bit of an oddity in Natchez, and rumors surrounding her life, especially her love life, are plentiful. Gossip has it that Amalia’s supposed lover killed her and then himself. No one seems to believe the story, yet no one offers any clues to whom the real murderer could be. With each piece of information Nora collects, the mystery becomes more tangled.
While investigating the murder-suicide, Nora must also confront her own past and a secret that is kept from the reader. We know she is divorced and suffering from loss and guilt, but the reason for her divorce remains a mystery until the end.
Dallas has thoughtfully constructed the intricate Nora. At first, Nora struggles with the Southern way while longing for cool Colorado nights. Her Western independence and lack of grace make her appear clumsy and unmannered, uncivilized to the prim and proper Southerners.
Loyalty in Natchez must be earned. But true to her Colorado roots, Nora is filled with feistiness and determination, and proves she can be one of them. Nora’s ability to become one of them is impressive.
Dallas did her homework and portrayed the South as it was and in a sense still is: defenders against Northern aggression, at least culturally. She’s taken a time period and place, and filled it with rich and lively characters with plenty of intrigue.
Renee Warner is a freelance writer in Atlanta.
—————————————-
New Mercies
By Sandra Dallas
St. Martin’s, 320 pages, $23.95
