The Girl From Charnelle |
~Willa Award Winner for Contemporary Fiction~ ~Library Journal Starred Review~ ~A Southwest Book of the Year~ ~An Editor's Choice pick of the Historical Novel Society~ ~ A School Library Journal Best Adult Book for High School Students~ ~A Mississippi Press/Gulf Coast Live Best Book of the Year~
It’s 1960 in the Panhandle town of Charnelle, Texas — a year and a half since sixteen-year-old Laura Tate’s mother boarded a bus and mysteriously disappeared. Assuming responsibility for the Tate household, Laura cares for her father and three brothers and outwardly maintains a sense of calm. But her balance is upset and the repercussions of her family’s struggles are revealed when a chance encounter with a married man leads Laura into a complicated relationship for which she is unprepared.
As Kennedy battles Nixon for the White House, Laura must navigate complex emotional terrain and choose whether she, too, will flee Charnelle. Dramatizing the tension between desire and familial responsibility, The Girl from Charnelle delivers a heartfelt portrait of a young woman’s reckoning with the paradoxes of love. Eloquent, tender, and heart-wrenching, K. L. Cook’s unforgettable debut novel marks the arrival of a significant new voice in American fiction. Praise for The Girl From Charnelle
Read an Excerpt from The Girl From CharnelleFrom “Chapter 1: New Year’s Eve, 1959” She’d only tasted beer before, never champagne. It was sweet and sharp and stung high in her head, and it gave her a tingling jolt, akin to her father’s black coffee. The more she sipped, the better it tasted. Soon she was finished with the whole cup. She stood by the punchbowl. The dance floor was swollen with people. The Pick Wickers, a six-piece band from Lubbock, plucked out a country waltz. The Pick Wickers had become minor Panhandle celebrities, had even opened for Marty Robbins in Lubbock, Amarillo, Fort Worth, Austin, and Houston. They had played the Charnelle New Year’s Eve celebrations twice before, in ’56 and ’58, and were regulars at the Armory dances. Laura had only seen them once and was glad that they were playing tonight. Though billed as a country act, they played a little bit of everything (rock and roll, the blues, swing, bluegrass, gospel) and would, rumor had it, get wilder as the night wore on and they drank more beer. The lead singer was a pudgy, gray-haired man with a string tie who sang like Fats Domino and sometimes played a screechy fiddle, and most of the other members of the band were in their thirties, except for the guy on the stand-up bass, a tall, thin boy with Cherokee cheekbones and a suit that looked too big for him. He would close his eyes during the songs and sway back and forth on the balls of his feet. Earlier in the evening, he popped his eyes open in the middle of “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and caught Laura staring at him. He winked at her, smiled, then closed his eyes again and continued plucking his bass as if that wink was a dream and the real world was in the rhythm of his fingers.
A little after eleven now. The decade almost gone, Laura thought. Another coming. Though her mother had left them a year and a half ago, it seemed at times like it happened just yesterday and at other times like her mother never existed. Time slipped or seemed stuck, but never the same. She didn’t know how to judge it, and it no longer mattered, or at least it didn’t matter in the same chronically aching way.
And on nights like this, it certainly didn’t matter. Her first New Year’s Eve party. Except for Rich, who was staying with Mrs. Ambling, her family was all here. Manny with his girlfriend, Joannie. Her father at the bar. Gene with his friends. They’d arrived late, almost eight-thirty, and the whole time, she’d been dancing—the Twist with Gene, a polka with her father, and other dances with boys she went to school with. Though chilly outside with the threat of snow, the inside of the Armory felt warm. On the deck were three barbecue grills with chicken and ribs and brisket. Inside were chips and a thousand variations on potato salad, bean salad, and fruit cocktail. Mounds of cookies and cakes and brownies. And a table full of champagne bottles, a few opened each hour, plastic cups filled. Her father had said she should try some, see if it tickled her fancy.
When she finished her champagne, John Letig suddenly stood by her side with a bottle in his hand, smiling, twirling around in goose-step foolishness.
“Let me top her off there, Miss Tate.”
She liked Mr. Letig. No one called him John, except his wife. Everyone else referred to him simply as Letig. He worked with her father at Charnelle Steel & Construction, and though he was younger—early thirties, she guessed—he played poker and went hunting and fishing with a group of older men, including her father. She sometimes babysat Mr. and Mrs. Letig’s two boys. One was almost five, Rich’s age, the other only three. She held out her cup, and he poured too quickly. The foam bubbled over the rim and splatted on the floor between them. She jumped back but could feel the wetness on her legs and the laced hem of her dress. She wanted to protect the dress, a green and white-striped one with small white satin bows on the sleeves and waist—a dress she’d had her eye on for more than a year and a half and had only recently saved enough money to buy, even though her father thought it frivolous to spend seven dollars on a dress she’d probably outgrow in a year or two.
“Whoops!” Mr. Letig chirped. He set the bottle on the table, gathered up a wad of napkins, and blotted the dance floor. “Here, let me get that,” he said and wiped at her shoes and leg. He was handsome, she’d noticed before. A big man with a thick chest, but also delicate features, a long face, his eyelashes thick and practically white, his nose angular, Scandinavian. His lips always very red, like a lipsticked girl’s, and white teeth only slightly crooked. His fingers were long and slender, and he moved with the grace of a large cat. “No, that’s okay. I’m fine.” She stepped away quickly and spilled more champagne. “I’m not gonna bite you,” he drawled, looking up at her, smiling. His cheeks were flushed. His blonde mustache wriggled comically. “Unless you want me to.” She laughed nervously. He grabbed her foot. He pulled his handkerchief from his back pocket and snapped it open. “Never let it be said that John Letig besmirched a lady’s shoes.”
He enunciated slowly, carefully, and she couldn’t tell if it was because he was drunk or because he was trying to be funny. She figured a combination. And it was funny and sweet in its way, and rather than call any more attention to herself—already people standing around the punchbowl were looking over—she let him finish polishing. He stood up, neatly folded the handkerchief, put it back in his pocket, and reached for the bottle of champagne. “Thank you,” she said.
He winked at her. “My pleasure. Do you know what time it is?” he asked. She could see now that his eyes were bloodshot and slightly glazed, but it didn’t scare her. He wasn’t a mean drunk, she could tell, not like a couple of Manny’s friends, who she knew got drunk as a precursor to fighting. He was having fun, and the alcohol brought out a comic foolishness that she found disarming.
She looked at the big Armory clock behind his head. “Eleven fifteen,” she said. “Right. And at midnight, you’re gonna owe me something.” He smiled and tapped the bottle against her cup. “Cheers!”
“Cheers,” she said.
“Don’t worry. I’ll find you.” He walked away, his shirttail dangling over the back of his pants. He walked straight, though, and she wondered—had she noticed this before?—if he used to be an athlete. He had an athlete’s natural agility, even for a big man, a lithe fluidity that suggested he was at home inside his body.
And what was that thing about finding her? Just him drunk, she guessed. She knew at midnight, there would be toasts, everybody kissing. She knew it was a custom. In the past their family had always stayed home, sometimes listening to the New York City special on the radio but often not even making it to midnight. She took a long swallow of champagne, and it felt like all the bubbles popped in her head at once.
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