The Dry Grass of August

The Dry Grass of August seems, at first, to be a simply told, straightforward story. Very reader-friendly, and full of interesting and heartachingly real characters. I found it hard to put down.

That simplicity is deceptive. It’s hard as all getout to put such a novel together this near-seamlessly.

This is the story of the Watts family and their dynamics, their secrets, their major (I know, we’re all sick of the term but) dysfunction.

It’s also the story of the late summer of 1954, in which the chronic tension of southern society during the Jim Crow era is becoming acute. Brown vs. Board of Education has everybody on edge. Violence against African Americans explodes under the pressure that a changing world levies on racists who hate the thought of that change.

Writing good fiction about an important time in history is hard for three reasons.

One is that it’s hard to tell the historic story and still tell a personal, individual story about the characters. They can end up being Symbols of events and issues, instead of people you believe in and care about.

Another is the need to do justice to the historic event. That means finding some way to view events through your fictional characters.

That kind of leads into the third hard part, which is sort of the Boolean intersection between the first two : the point of view problem. How many characters’ points of view will you need to speak through? Can one person tell the whole story or do you need multiple viewpoints in order to avoid having some intrusive narrator stop the story to give a history lecture?

The single point of view of a 13-year-old suburban white girl takes us through this hot and dangerous August. In alternating chapters, Jubie tell us her memories of her family as they grew more prosperous but more emotionally estranged. These memories alternate with chapters that take place during and after a road trip that the family is taking, from suburban Charlotte, NC, through the deep south.

There are four children in the Watts family. The two eldest who drive the story are Stell, 16, and June, “Jubie,” 13.

Author Anna Jean Mayhew’s first smart decision was to avoid making Jubie the gawky, underdeveloped wallflower-type who envies a more-noticed-by-boys older sister.

Jubie is nothing of the kind, and three cheers for that! The sisters fight and differ, but like and respect each other. Jubie is attractive and brave. And so is Stell, whose religious conversion spurs her curiosity about faith. Stell’s explorations lead the sisters into major events in the novel.

Crafting a plot that would take a 13-year-old girl through every nook and cranny that puts together the pieces of this story seems a daunting task to me. Sure, you can contrive ways for a single viewpoint-character to be everywhere she needs to be and see or hear enough to piece it all together, but usually it would seem exactly that. Contrived.

Mayhew solves that problem nicely through a couple of means. The device of the road trip lets us see the dynamics of the mother and children, their reactions to strangers in strange places, their interaction with the Florida relatives they visit, their coping with disaster.

More importantly, this is in part Jubie’s coming-of-age story, and Jubie takes an active part in expanding her own world. She’s smart enough to seek answers without alienating the people of whom she asks questions, and determined enough to go where the answers are, permission be damned. Her discoveries seem not only likely but inevitable.

Racism in the segregationist era had many faces. The Watts family lives the genteel version, in which everyone has “help” and believes that they treat them respectfully. The successful folks in the nice neighborhoods abhor the n-word. But as the Watts family drives through the deep, small town south, they encounter white trash ignorance and violence, and the consequences are tragic when their black maid, Mary, is abducted by a crew of enraged white drunks.

If the novel has a flaw, it could be its lack of an explanation for the beatings Jubie receives from her father. He’s a drunk and sometimes loving but sometimes violent, and of his children, only Jubie is ever on the receiving end of beatings.

Why? Even in the procession of family flashbacks Jubie doesn’t tell us when it started or what the original pretext was. Jubie is a questioner and questioners make dishonest people uncomfortable. That she would be his chosen target is not so much implausible as it is simply unspoken. This omission is kind of like an unpainted spot on a large and otherwise detailed and skilfully painted canvas.

Just as her father finds Jubie more of a threat than he does the other children, Mary finds her more of a kindred spirit, and the bond between the two is one of respectful knowledge and equality. Jubie runs away to attend Mary’s funeral in Mary’s church, and through her eyes we see the strength and world-changing force of the black church in the era of the Civil Rights movement. The black community has questions and will not take silencing for answers.

The officiant speaks on Isaiah 5:24, from a wonderful chapter which rails furiously against oppression and injustice :

Therefore as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will be as rottenness, and their blossom go up like dust ...

The truth about Mary’s life and death, and the self-evident truth about the civil rights of all people are both coming, relentless as the fire that obliterates the dry grass. It’s August, folks.

Although it contains some horrific events and a pretty frank depiction of a family’s downfall, the levelheaded, sensitive narrator and the respect that the story gives to a panorama of characters give it true class. It’s a great book for teenagers whose parents don’t mind them reading hard realism if it’s done with class. But isn’t geared to teens and some things in it require adult understanding.

This terrific little novel deserves a LOT of attention.