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Beautician, anthropologist's wife, rock-star manager, racetrack gambler, and now itinerant faith healer: the heroine of Gayl Jones long-awaited new novel has traveled a long and difficult road from her grandmother's Louisville beauty shop to the bus stops and "tank towns" of the rural South. As she spools back through her accumulated memories, Harlan Jane Eagleton weaves a complex stream-of-consci... More

Beautician, anthropologist's wife, rock-star manager, racetrack gambler, and now itinerant faith healer: the heroine of Gayl Jones long-awaited new novel has traveled a long and difficult road from her grandmother's Louisville beauty shop to the bus stops and "tank towns" of the rural South. As she spools back through her accumulated memories, Harlan Jane Eagleton weaves a complex stream-of-consciousness tale that at second glance turns out not to be chaotic at all. Jones has an unerring ear for dialogue and the rhythms of everyday speech, and Eagleton makes poetry out of even the detritus of pop culture--although her narrative is also rich in allusions from Chaucer to Gayl Jones herself. From Eagleton's grandmother, who believes she was born as a turtle, to the paranoid German-African businessman who becomes Eagleton's lover, the novel is filled with memorable characters and multilayered relationships. The Healing is the first book in more than 20 years from Jones, the reclusive author of two seminal narratives of violence, slavery, abuse, and black rage, Corregidora and Eva's Man. Like these two novels, The Healing has its fair share of violence and tragedy, but--as the title might suggest--here it's tempered with a surprising portion of humor, forgiveness, even faith.

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