Playing the Bones by Louise Redd

From the Publisher

On Lacy Springs's list of One Hundred Things I Want Out of Life, the first slot is disconcertingly blank. Unfortunately, the second slot is filled - by her desire for a man who is wrong for her in every way. Lacy Springs has a job she cares about, a fiance she loves, and a wedding she should be planning. But one night she meets a blues singer called Black Jesus, and all her well-laid plans are cast aside. Nothing Lacy says or does or tells herself can keep her from falling into an overwhelming affair with Black Jesus, one that threatens not just her nuptials, but also her most basic ideas about who she is. Playing the Bones is Lacy's account of nights with Black Jesus and days trying to put her life back together. In her quest for balance, Lacy turns to some strange remedies: a celibacy program for her wedding night, healing rituals at the scenes of childhood traumas, going on the road with Black Jesus and his band, even a trip to Graceland. These actions take Lacy far beyond her familiar territory and help her begin to see that intimacy with someone else will only work once she's opened up to herself. As the story unfolds, Lacy sets out, undaunted - if not toward a happy ending, at least on a journey she knows is worth taking.

Publishers Weekly

Equal parts recovery manual, travelogue and tall tale, Redd's first novel sings a bluesy ballad about Lacy Springs, an attractive young Texas schoolteacher wrestling with her dark and disturbing past. Raised in Dallas by her wealthy, abusive mother, Lacy, who teaches high-school English, lives in Houston with Ellis, her long-suffering fianc. Ellis may be tender and understanding, but that's not enough to stop Lacy from sneaking out for wild assignations with blues musician Black Jesus, her volatile, sensual lover. Even "my PhD in Comparative Literature does not prevent my heart from freezing up, and then thawing when I hear this man's foolish talk," she confesses. The story line traces Lacy's struggles to confront her demons. She's aided in this quest by a cut-rate New Age therapist, Eva, a loopy grad student in a Velcro-fastened turban, but when Lacy can't face Eva's questions, she scribbles lyrics on a legal pad, recasting into comfortably abstracted songs the themes that trouble her. Like the turbulent lives of the blues musicians she admires, Lacy's own existence grows increasingly dramatic as she juggles the promise of a stable domestic routine with Ellis and her exciting, sometimes violent, time on the road with Black Jesus. As the action shifts through the South, from Houston to Graceland, Redd provides evocative descriptions of a world where restaurants serve "salsa so hot it drives the confusion right out of your head." The plot takes some broad, almost farcical, twists that leaven the solemnity of Lacy's revelations but also come close to trivializing them. On the whole, though, this is an engaging and affecting examination of one woman's determined search for self-affirmation. (May)

Library Journal

In this humorous yet sentimental first novel, Lacey Springs, a highly educated, upper-middle-class schoolteacher, is trying to pull her life together before her wedding in six weeks. As she deals with the frustrations of teaching and her aggravation with planning the wedding, she enjoys infidelity with a local blues singer named Black Jesus. Meanwhile, Lacey writes blues songs to escape her past and seeks counseling through an unlicensed bisexual therapist who obsesses over animal rights while trying to get Lacey to confront her sexual abuse at the hands of a fanatically religious mother and a male baby-sitter during her youth. This is a clever novel on the joys and sorrows of life. The writing is witty, and the characters are lively, realistic, and fun. A quick read; recommended for popular collections.-Shenise Ross, New York

Kirkus Reviews

Newcomer Redd blends unlikely ingredients—a strong and sassy Texan protagonist, satire, New Age hokum, and an exploration of the scars of childhood abuse—into a surprisingly assured debut.

Lacy is a bread-baking redhead with a Ph.D. in comparative lit who teaches eighth grade in Houston. She's engaged to marry nice- guy Ellis but is preoccupied by her affair with Black Jesus, a famous blues musician. She's also attracted to Marcy, Black Jesus's brother, an aspiring rapper with gold teeth. Lacy tells all this to Eva, her turban-wearing therapist, while also grappling with her anger at her mother, who used to make her eat her dinner out of the dog's hair-ringed water bowl. Then, as a seven-year-old, she was sexually abused by overweight baby-sitter Donny. Eva sneaks Lacy into her childhood home for a recovery ceremony that involves burning a bundle of sage. Next, Lacy marries Ellis, then ducks out, on the pretext of a pilgrimage to Graceland, to join Black Jesus on tour. But the bluesman is arrested for beating up another woman, and Lacy returns home inspired to tell Ellis that their marriage is a sham. With her devoted husband on hold, Lacy gets down to some serious healing: She tells off her mother, confronts Black Jesus, and, with Eva in tow, heads back home for more ritual closure. Finally, Lacy tracks down and tells off Donny, finds satisfaction teaching illiterate adults, and learns to be by herself, presumably as a prelude to rejoining Ellis. The slow, subtle chronicle of this young woman's recovery is genuinely moving, despite Eva's silly excesses and a succession of kitschy backdrops that range from Elvis's grave through a cell in the county jail to the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building.

First-novelist Redd paints modern-day Texas in all its gaudy glory, without trivializing her heroine's painful struggle and hard-won growth.

What People Are Saying

Madison Smartt Bell
Hilarious, crazy, brilliant, heart-breaking, and unforgettable.

James Robison
A wild and wildly funny novel...a burning satiric vision of Texas and Southern womenhood...shocks and raw sexuality sweetened by voluptuous, hip lyricism.

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