I didn’t grow up in the South, but Clyde Edgerton’s stories are some of my favorites to cure homesickness.
Clyde Edgerton’s ear for dialogue captures the thoughts and conversations of older and younger generations in small North Carolina towns. The culture of the local Baptist church is interwoven with some Southern nostalgia, but his quirky characterizations are the most memorable thing about his quiet uplifting stories.
If you’ve never read Edgerton, start with Walking Across Egypt, the story of a spunky old lady, a stray dog, a hungry teenaged orphan, and the best home-cooking in Hansen County, N. C. Wishing for grandchildren of her own, Mattie Rigsbee befriends a young delinquent named Wesley and takes him in, even though she feels she is “slowing down” at age 78. The sequel, Killer Diller, finds Wesley still at work redeeming himself in the eyes of the Lord and of his foster grandma. Walking Across Egypt and Killer Diller have also been made as movies.
Raney is a romance, about the first two years, two months, and two days of a modern southern marriage between a small town Baptist girl and a liberal Methodist man from Atlanta.
The Floatplane Notebooks concerns a family who gathers each year to clean the family cemetery. The story is told through six different first-person narratives, which is reminiscent of As I Lay Dying, by another great Southern writer, William Faulkner. And Redeye is a western, of sorts, in the land of mesa, dudes, rattlesnakes, frontiersmen, and bounty hunters.
In his most recent novel, Lunch at the Piccadilly, Edgerton reflects on how America treats people who live in nursing homes, through the story of a sweet middle aged man and his last living relative, Aunt Lil.
Edgerton also recently released an autobiographical work, Solo: My Adventures in the Air, centered on his lifelong relationship with aircraft and flying, including his service as a combat pilot in Vietnam and his personal Piper Cub.
Several Edgerton audiobooks are downloadable through NetLibrary. Also, visit Clyde Egderton’s website.
