“It’s not often that a tale this breathtaking manages to sweep up in its headlong trajectory such a gallery of complex, authentic, and utterly mad characters. Nor is it often that such a swift, page-turning narrative can touch such depths and achieve such wisdom along the way.
In J. Robert Towery’s Magnolia Song, the South is a carnival of comedy, danger, and heartbreak. The book is a flat-out wonder.” — Steve Stern
The explosive saga of two Memphis families whose intertwined fates spiral out of control over four generations of heartbreak and renewal.
By day, Gator Bates bumps along as the spoiled son of a self-made real estate tycoon; by night, he spins slapstick fables to entertain his drunken pals at the exclusive Collegiate Club. Gator lives (mostly) on the scrub pine acreage in northwest Mississippi on which his father and uncle once ran a commercial reptile exhibition. The fields of marijuana he cultivates there, along with a bull alligator and a complement of rare snakes, make the ranch a magnet for mayhem.
After Gator’s adopted son initiates an affair with his under-age stepdaughter, Gator embarks on a mission to rescue the dissolute heir from a salt flat in south Texas where he is staked to the ground under the eyes of circling buzzards. The attempted rescue uncovers a string of revelations of incest and murder perpetrated in the shadow of a scheme that has laundered hundreds of millions of dollars belonging to the Aryan Brotherhood.
It’s a rollicking gallop of a novel, a stampede over rough terrain, where the absurd leavens a yeasty mix of sin, sacrifice, and redemption, imbuing the least of the characters with an irrepressible dignity.
