That Pinson Girl

By: Gerry Wilson

Narrated by: Elisabeth Ashby

In a bleak Mississippi farmhouse in 1918, Leona Pinson gives birth to an illegitimate son whose father she refuses to name, but who will, she is convinced, return from the war to rescue her from a hardscrabble life with a distant mother, a dangerous brother, and a dwarf aunt. When, instead, her lover returns with a wife in tow, her dreams are shattered. As her brother's violence escalates and her aunt flees, Leona must rely on the help of Luther Biggs, the son of Leona's grandfather and one of his former slaves, to protect her child.

Told against the backdrop of the deprivation of World War I, the tragedies of the influenza epidemic, and the burden of generations of betrayal, That Pinson Girl unfolds in lyrical, unflinching prose, engaging the timeless issues of racism, sexism, and poverty.

©2024 Gerry Wilson (P)2025 Tantor Media

Faulkner in Time & Place, but Kindness Trumps Spectacle.

I would classify this as Literary Fiction. I believe that other readers/reviewers might be more familiar with a lighter genre fiction. The complexities and contradictions are rather the point, rather than flaws.

I’m not from Mississippi. My region of origin is upriver from Memphis. But our family stories have similar themes. They prompt similar questions. And to me that’s what makes for good literature, a specific place and people whose humanity rhymes with other specific places and peoples. The story is what happens when characters veer from the well-worn path of propriety by accident of circumstances and/or necessity and need to wayfind as best a way forward as possible. Each and every one of the characters do their best in this effort. All miss the mark in their own ways. And yet, love of family, of neighbors, and of community is the incessant beat that urges the bone tired to keep going. Life demands to be lived however imperfectly. Love demands to love no matter how imperfectly. Deeply satisfying.

I feel as if I can now claim That Pinson Girl in my family (literary) Bible.