Quakertown by Lee Martin

From the Publisher

"Based on the true story of a shameful episode in North Texas history, Quakertown draws on the rich texture of the South - of the Pecan Creek running along the edges of Quakertown, the remarkable and rare white lilac, and of the rising tensions marking each nod and greeting."--BOOK JACKET.

Chicago Tribune

Romantic. As emotionally driven as the movie Titanic....[Martin] can take your breath away.

Washington Post

A consistently impressive and often dazzling new novel....Lee Martin has written one of the finest novels of the year.

Portland Oregonian

Lee Martin's brilliant first novel...deserves a wide audience.

Boston Herald

Martin's measured prose is the perfect medium for this tale of perserverance.

Columbus Dispatch

Quakertown is a page turner... a richly detailed portrait... Martiin treats his characters with compassion.

Fort Worth Star Telegram

Exceptional. A Joy to read.

Washington Post Book World - Jabari Asim

In his richly dramatic re-imagining of the events behind Quakertown's demise, Lee Martin has written one of the finest novels of the year.

Iron Horse Literary Review

...a satisfying and unique novel.

Kirkus Reviews

Inordinately busy first novel by the Texan author of The Least You Need to Know (stories: 1996). It begins wonderfully, establishing the contrasting but intertwined existences of two families in the West Texas town of Denton during the 1920s. Yardman Little Washington Jones lives with his feisty wife, Eugie, and daughter Camellia in the peaceful black ghetto of Quakertown. Little's primary employer, wealthy white businessman Andrew Bell, resides "up the hill" on Oak Street; his wife drinks "tonic" for her nerves, and his son, Kizer, is crippled. Martin quickly establishes a network of complex relationships, exploring his characters' public and secret lives in both present action and extended flashbacks. Camellia, a light-skinned schoolteacher, falls in love with feisty black war veteran Ike Mattoon but can't forget Kizer, a childhood friend who has always loved her. There's also a relationship with a white man buried in Eugie's past life, and every imaginable chicken comes home to roost when goodhearted Mr. Bell stands up to the Ku Klux Klan and spearheads a plan to buy out Quakertown's homeowners at fair prices and move them to even greener pastures, some distance from downtown Denton. Ike's refusal to truckle to racial prejudice, Kizer's determination to have Camellia even if she's another man's wife, Andrew Bell's frustrated benevolence, and the Candide-like Little's earth-wisdom ("Treat a flower or a tree right, and it makes your life pretty") are all cruelly tested. A threatened abortion, an accidental fatal shooting, at least one too many ponderously symbolic conflagrations, and the climactic release of Ike's aggrieved violent impulses-these are only a few links in the chainof catastrophes that undermines the loving patience with which Martin, a fine stylist but a disastrous plotter, has created fully rounded characters deserving of a better fate than this novel's ill-judged collapse into trite melodrama. Based on a true story, we're told, but Martin's overheated plot keeps us from believing a word of it.

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