Thank you for including this funny story as a change of pace. Mattie was a “pistol”, as my father-in-law would have described her. Even though she talked frequently of “slowing down”, she was still a dynamo compared to everyone else in the story. She reminds me of a lot of really energetic people I have known – blissfully unaware than not everyone wants to be as busy as they are. Mattie had a very positive effect on the dogcatcher and on Wesley, but her own children probably found it hard to live comfortably with her. Her son Robert became just a lazy pudge and her daughter Elaine took refuge in feminism and stubbornness. Mattie’s burning desire for grandchildren reminds me of someone in our family who pushed her children to provide grandchildren that she can take care of as soon as she retires from work. I was pretty shocked by Mattie’s statement to Elaine than she intended to marry Wesley. Hopefully, it was only meant to prod Elaine to get married and have children. But I pity poor Wesley if Mattie ever took that notion seriously. He was confused and inexperienced enough that she might have coaxed him into it as a way of staying out of the detention center.
Many stories portray strongly religious people as harmful zealots or shallow hypocrites or emotional crazies. But in this story, religion is a very positive force in Mattie’s life. She responds very strongly to the call to service to others – that call gives her purpose and focus and connection with other people, so that she doesn’t sit around feeling lonely or neglected. It also gives her the justification to do something out of her normal routines, like visiting Wesley in the detention center. Food is her way of reaching out. But she is such a good cook that even the reluctant people end up glad to be sharing her table.
As I was reading, the situations and dialogue seemed like scenes from a movie. The scene at the end, where Mattie coaxes Wesley, the deputy, the sheriff, her son and his new girlfriend, her nosy neighbors, her sister Pearl, the man whose car was stolen, her rebellious daughter, and finally the dogcatcher to eat while calmly clarifying the saga of Wesley’s morning in church, reminded me a of similar scene from an old Cary Grant movie. Sometimes I visualized Mattie looking like Vicki Lawrence’s “Mama” on the “Carol Burnette Show.” But often she called to mind the older women who come into the reference room to ask questions about their family history. They are nice and very chatty about their families, but they are also quite determined to get the information they are looking for. No doubt about it!
As a reader, it was an adjustment for me to go from being totally inside Ivy Rowe’s mind in Fair and Tender Ladies or really immersed in the atmosphere of Porgy to the more detached 3rd person narrative of The World Made Straight. The story was smooth and easy to read, but the characters didn’t grab me as much as Ivy Rowe and Porgy did.
I think it was good for me to read about the feelings of a troubled teenager. Maybe I can be a little less judgmental about the kids in the Reference Room. It wasn’t hard to sympathize with Travis’ teenage insecurities and his frustration and resentment of his father’s constant harshness. But it was hard for me to sympathize with his theft of the marijuana plants, repeated several times, even though he knew he was on Toomey property. Given their history, that seemed really stupid. I was glad that Travis expanded his horizons through reading and study and that he took responsibility for Dena at the end and went back for Leonard. But I really had a hard time accepting his revenge on the Toomeys after he rescued Dena. It wasted a lot of time and inflamed them enough to put Leonard in jeopardy too. It seemed like a plot contrivance, especially when they ended up in the field where the Civil War massacre occurred.
I didn’t like Leonard much because he had just given up to the point where he lived in a pigsty, made a living from other people’s dependence on drugs and pills, and treated Dena with insulting indifference. His one redeeming effort was getting Travis to study for the GED exam and apply for college. It was very hard for me to accept his preoccupation with the Civil War massacre and his identification with his ancestor, the doctor. Well, even though the doctor was a witness (or maybe participant?) in the massacre, he certainly did a lot more for other people than Leonard did. The story seemed to imply that Leonard’s death was some kind of final chapter to the history of Shelton Laurel, but that was hard for me to buy. Leonard died confronting a greedy bully – the people massacred at Shelton Laurel were in the middle of a confusing and frightening civil war that involved everyone around them.
The doctor’s journal was my favorite part of the story – how he took care of his neighbors, bartered with them for payment, and conveyed compassion and an inquiring mind. The World Made Straight brought out some interesting history – that the North Carolina mountain people weren’t sold on secession like that big plantation owners nearer the coast. I read in a Tennessee travel brochure that the mountain people of eastern Tennessee considered breaking off from the state and remaining in the Union, like West Virginia did. That is something I never read about in my high school or college history courses. It reminds me of the split between South Carolina’s upstate pioneers and Low Country planters during the Revolutionary War.
