Courtesy of Beaverdale Books

Reviewed by Catherine Rihm

By Amy Franklin-Willis

Atlantic Monthly Press

01/31/2012

$25

320 pp

Southern author Amy Franklin-Willis delivers with “The Lost Saints of Tennessee,” a poignant debut novel that is as heartbreaking as it is uplifting. She tells the compelling story of the Cooper family, exploring the relationships between its members as they confront illness, death, loss and the changes that ensue.

We meet Zeke as he approaches his 42nd birthday. Distraught over the death of his twin brother 10 years earlier, he still struggles daily with the emotions. His ex-wife has recently remarried, and he lives in a shack on his estranged mother’s property. With future prospects seeming bleak, Zeke loads his dead brother’s dog, Tucker, into his truck and leaves his hometown of Clayton, Tenn.

Lillian, his mother, has just learned she’s gravely ill but is ready should death come. Riddled with grief and guilt over the mistakes she made in the past that gravely affected her family and ultimately drove her remaining son away, her story is gripping and sad.

Zeke’s journey after leaving town enables him to confront his past and his own grief and guilt surrounding the secrets and mysteries the family held. Franklin-Willis wades through what it means to be a family and how one can summon the strength to forgive in order to find a way to heal. With highly flawed yet likeable characters, she calls to mind a little bit of the landscape of Southern great Larry Brown, but with less grit. Though the ending is wrapped up fairly tidily, most readers may welcome the encouragement after hauling through the characters’ grim stories. CV