Growing From a Hard-Packed Ground
Novelist Kimberly Brock reviews Red Clay Suzie, the story of a gay, physically-misshapen boy in rural Georgia who struggles against suffocating expectations, heartless indifference and wounding rejection.
Grandaddy taught me the rule of potatoes and carrots, loving guidance to last a lifetime.”
Loving guidance accurately encapsulates the themes of this debut novel, which leans toward a gentle memoir by Georgia-born author Jeffrey Dale Lofton. You’re going to grow up all sorts of ways, some of them hard, all of them human. Red Clay Suzie delivers droll descriptions of a little boy trying to grow from a hard-packed ground where rangy characters populate a South Georgia world of cinderblock homes, muscle cars and back yard gardens. Generational dramas play out in episodic scenes like soapy bubbles floating over a hot summer afternoon.
The South kicks its feet up and gets down to business telling this tale through the lens of Philbet, a young boy growing up sweet, gay, disfigured and defying social norms in a trusting way that leaves everyone agog. Myopic and naïve as his take on his family and circumstances may be at times, he wisely navigates a passel of relatives, small-town friends and schoolyard bullies. He’s armed with sage advice gleaned at every opportunity from those who tuck protection into the cracks around him, and even from those who take shots at him. He approaches life with a nimble curiosity so powerful that it often inspires the same in the rigid minds of adversaries. The grace he extends toward his flawed and often cruel beloved makes him an endearing and poetic narrator. Sorrow and joy exist in equal measure and Philbet doesn’t seem at all uncomfortable with that.
When moist, it had the texture of silken butter, but when the beating Georgia sun leached it of moisture, it was either hard or powdery, slippery even in the heat, feeling almost liquid against skin. That was the alchemy of red clay.”
From the opening lines, I was struck by two things: it’s obvious that Philbet is going to suffer, but he is not a victim. Philbet is, in fact, built for this story. He appears to be a vulnerable creature that will surely be ground under the tires of the cars he loves so much. Instead, he is the gravel. He supports his family through their losses and trials. He is firm in his love of beauty, something his nearest and dearest most often take for granted or perceive as a weakness. He absorbs their heartaches and joys, able to hold them alongside his own, ultimately coming to understand that he is differently and perfectly shaped to serve this red clay road.
My own childhood was captured on 8mm film and my memories clicked and whirred under those glaring lights from my grandfather’s home movie camera, running across the living room wall of my mind as I read this book. The nostalgia was so thick I had to turn on a fan. Like Philbet’s mama’s pound cake, I love a sad streak. This story poked at all the tender spots inside me and reminded me of what was real and important and wisely dusted off for daily use from those growing-up days. Tomato sandwiches, lightning bugs, running barefoot through a newly turned garden, the boy next door, a good hiding place, a stolen kiss, somebody who loves the shape of you and all the ways you might grow next.
Red Clay Suzie is part of our Pride Month Reading List for 2023.
Kimberly Brock is the bestselling author of The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare, which was shortlisted for the prestigious Townsend Prize for Fiction, and The River Witch, recipient of the Georgia Author of the Year Award. She is the founder of Tinderbox Writers Workshop and has served as a guest lecturer for many regional and national writing workshops, including at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. A native of North Georgia, she now lives near Atlanta.
