Title: The Night the Lights Went Out
Author: Karen White
Publisher: Berkley
On the shelves: reprint, March 27, 2018
Format: trade paperback
Genre: Southern women’s fiction
Price: $16.00 US
Pages: 406 pages and a reader’s guide/preview of Dreams of Falling
Setting: Sweet Apple, Georgia 2016
After Merilee Talbot Dunlap’s husband decided to leave his wife for his daughter’s math teacher, Merilee has no other choice but to move on and make the best life possible for their children, Lily and Colin.
She packs their belongings in the minivan and heads to Sweet Apple, Georgia where she’ll rent a craftsman cottage behind Sugar Prescott’s farmhouse. Sugar is 93 years old, smart, observant and not afraid to say what’s on her mind. Though Sugar is one to keep to herself, she becomes close with Merilee and her children, but won’t let them know. She prefers sarcasm and distance for good reason. Mainly because it hurts too much to lose the ones you love.
Throughout the book both Sugar and Merilee’s perspectives are revealed. For Sugar, its flashbacks of the difficult times of her life and there are many. Her family owned property and managed to pay for farm workers. They manage to survive the Depression and helped other families. Some people needed more help than others. Some were pure evil and preyed on the innocent. One of the special people in her life was her brother, Jimmy, whose birth left him somewhat disabled and a further encounter took away his independence. Her mother’s depression was difficult for them all.
Merilee struggles to make ends meet and to fit in with the other mothers at her children’s school. She is nothing like them. Think Stepford wives, but instead of it being a man wanting perfection and control, it’s a class mom.
Throughout the book, a blogger anonymously reviews the actions of the residents in the community and gives an opinion without being preachy. I would think it’s the blogger’s way of making them more aware of what’s happening and to get them to think more appropriately.
There is something darker at the story’s core. Eventually, all things are revealed, whether they are buried in the past or pop up unexpected in our present.
The Night the Lights Went Out reaches two generations of women showing that you don’t have to be related, you just have to care about another human being. Everyone has the capability to love and an inner strength. But what happens in the past can take on a life of its own and control you if you don’t stop it.
Four cold glasses of Southern sweet tea
gottawritenetwork.wordpress.com
August 15, 2018
Denise Fleischer
GottaWriteNetwork 