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The Drowning of Stephan Jones by Bette Greene Book review by William B. Lindley
This novel is a morality play. The sermon that it preaches is that hatred is corrupting and unchristian, but that a lot of Christians do it anyway. The setting is a pair of small towns in rural Arkansas, and the objects of hatred are a gay male couple from Boston who run an antique store in the "artsy" town (Parson Springs), but shop for necessities in the other town (Ratchetville). The haters include a Baptist preacher, a hardware store owner, and the owner's son, a high school senior, who becomes the principal fag-basher. The main "good guy" is the woman librarian, and her teenage daughter becomes the center of the action and of the moral dilemmas when she falls in love with the son of the hardware store owner. All these people live in Ratchetville.As befits a morality play, the characters are more embodiments of the ideas that are being thrashed out than complex human beings with a life of their own. As the story goes on, some of them are fleshed out so that we can appreciate them more. What this story has, though, that morality plays often lack, is plot. "There are three elements critical to a good novel: plot, plot, and plot." This one is a real page-turner. As you can tell from the title, one of the gay men is drowned as a result of fag- bashing. The events prior to the drowning all lead up to it, but the follow-through is another matter. The surprise ending is so good that it is almost a crime to say that there is one.Given the subject matter, I regret that there was no home-grown homosexuality in the small-town setting. There were three reasons for hating those guys: they were queers, they were outsiders, and their religious faith was questionable (to the locals). That makes hatred almost easy. The novel that explores the interplay between sexual orientation and religion in rural America remains to be written.The author's husband subscribes to Truth Seeker, and she suggests that it helped a little. We're glad to be there for her. Bantam Books, ©1991, paperback, 218 pages, $3.99. 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10303.
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