The Patron Saint of Red Chevys Book

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The changes caused by events and the impossibility of reversing those changes are the themes of Kay Sloan's atmospheric novel set in 1960s Mississippi. Early one morning, Bernice Starling, a onetime blues singer, is murdered in her pickup, leaving behind a husband and two daughters. Later that same day, local TV weatherman Levi Litvak is killed in a fiery one-car crash. Soon, rumors begin to fly: Levi and Bernice had been lovers; Levi ended both of their lives when Bernice broke it off.

The ramifications of Bernice's murder fall hard on her family. And for years, the rumors continue, some of them racially charged. Bernice's younger daughter, Jubilee, inherits her mother's red Chevy truck but refuses to wash away the memory of her mother in the blood on the seats, instead draping bath towels over them like slipcovers. But eventually, Jubilee decides to escape the lingering memories of her mother's death by applying herself at school and making plans to attend college far away, at Berkeley. Will a simple change in geography make things better? As Jubilee tells her boyfriend, "I'll always be different because of what happened to my mother." The truth of her mother's life is just a small part of this beautifully written story, which follows Jubilee's wrenching search -- simply for a way out. (Fall 2004 Selection)

Publishers Weekly

Part quirky coming-of-age story, part murder mystery, this debut tracks the efforts of a Mississippi girl to deal with her mother's sudden death. Jubilee Starling is in junior high when her mother, flamboyant, free-spirited Bernice Starling, a blues and jazz singer, is found stabbed to death in her truck. The most likely suspect is Levi Litvak, the handsome local weatherman who also happens to be Bernice's lover, but when Litvak dies right after the murder in a car accident, the case goes cold. Sloan turns her attention to her young protagonist, penning a series of heartfelt but somewhat lifeless scenes that strive to capture local color, including a class field trip to a prison, a freak show at the county fair and a tornado that briefly touches down in the small Gulf Coast town. The novel gains momentum when Jubilee earns a scholarship to Berkeley and Sloan chronicles her cross-country drive to college with her father. Those passages and the initial college scenes resonate with an emotional poignance that is missing from much of the Gulf Coast material, although the resolution to the murder subplot turns out to be anticlimactic. Sloan shows flashes of talent, but this is an uneven first novel. Agent, Martin Shepard. (July) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.