BELOW THE HEART

This novel-in-progress was a 2008 semi-finalist in the Mary McCarthy Prize for Fiction, sponsored by Sarabande Books. The (McCarthy Prize) readers’ comments on the novel include: “What’s striking about this collection is how closely and honestly it looks at human sexuality and the experience of living in a body, how carefully narrated these fragile moments are.”

Synopsis

Her name is Lucky—as in Lucky Strike cigarettes—and she is born in the middle of a tobacco field in 1932. Is it any wonder that she starts smoking at the age of five? Her mother dies minutes after giving birth. A neighbor boy, five-year-old James Theacts (JT) Marvel, is there to run for help. (His brothers are named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.) Lucky and JT are separated that night and reunite seventy years later, though their story is not a romance, but the story of the people who come into their lives and cause them to meet again in 2002. Below the Heart’s characters include Lucky’s daughter, Ritzie Jane Reynolds (RJ Reynolds), named after Ritz Crackers; Otto, Lucky and RJ’s live-in landlord, a dark-haired man who believes he has narcolepsy; Harry T, Theacts’ son, a man who has a twelve-year-old daughter suddenly dropped into his bachelor life; Adamina, the little girl whose wish to know her father comes true; the Walts, two misfits who die in a freak accident and leave half a million dollars to Theacts. Adamina will carry on when Lucky dies. She will be a little lucky.