In the Family Way: A Novel

Tommy Hays is a Southerner writing a novel about a quirky Southern childhood; consequently he has a lot of literary ghosts to reckon with. Given this, it's remarkable that In the Family Way is as original as it is. The narrator of the story is Jeru Lamb, a 10-year-old growing up in Greenville, South Carolina. He's an overweight, clumsy boy full of end-of-the-world fears. The roots of Jeru's insecurity can be traced to the dog attack that killed his older brother Mitchell. While Jeru ran ahead, the animal tore Mitchell to pieces. "When Mitchell sees the German Shepherd gain on me, he drops back, and I run past him. He holds out his opened hand to the dog. I hear him speak; the words seem to be whispered right in my ear. 'Here boy, come here boy, it's all right.'"

Mitchell's death gives weight and density to Jeru's story; his guilt and anxiety are ever present, even at the book's most throwaway, sentimental moments. Beautiful passages illuminate the boy's awkward attempts to be a good kid, to calm his obsession with doom. "It was not lost on me that by expecting the worst every breathing moment, I backed into prophecy once in awhile." When President Kennedy is assassinated, or when his pseudo-philosopher father almost leaves the family, Jeru can't help but think that he saw it all coming, that somehow he has always known that the world is a violent, abandoned place. Dog attacks, race riots, dead presidents, dead brothers--these misfortunes pile up one by one. As he grows older, Jeru wishes that the world would stop, that the dog would have halted in its tracks, and that his family would be released from the past's dark spell. Tommy Hays skillfully evokes this unrelenting longing in tight, cinematic scenes--the kind of prose best read aloud in a deep Southern drawl. --Emily White