Susan Gregg Gilmore casts a spell on readers with the way of her words. Author of the novels Looking For Salvation at the Dairy Queen and The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove, Gilmore brings the cracks and crevices of simple life well lived out into the forefront of a southern landscape. More than must-reads, her novels capture the cadence of the south, breathe life into authentic, rare snapshots of life behind the screened-in porches and offer hope and empathy in the most unexpected of places.
[Peaks inside Gilmore’s works]
Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen
My daddy always said that if the good Lord can take the time to care for something as small as a baby sparrow nesting in a tree, then surely he could take the time to listen to a little girl in Ringgold, Georgia. So every night before I went to bed I got down on my knees and begged the Lord to find me a way out of this town. And every morning, I woke up in the same old place.
It was a place that I, Catherine Grace Cline, never wanted to call home, even though I was born and raised here. It was a place where everybody knew everything about you down to the color of underwear your mama bought you at the Dollar General Store. It was a place that just never felt right to me, like a sweater that fits too tight under your arms. It was a place where girls like me traded their dreams for a boy with a couple of acres of land and a wood-framed house with a new electric stove. It was a place I always planned on leaving.
The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove
Apparently among those who consider their social standing some measure of importance, I am to be admired, for I am one of few Nashvillians who can claim with infallible certainty that a blood relation has lived in this town since its inception. My mother, although a Grove by marriage, never tired of sharing this piece of family trivia at cocktail parties or morning coffees, convinced that it elevated her position far beyond what her birth parents could have guaranteed. And whether she did exaggerate the details in the hopes of impressing her peers, the truth remains that a poor Carolina farmer did pack his bags some two hundred and fifty years ago and set out to cross the Appalachian Mountains, heading west with his young bride determined to claim a few acres of his own and a better life for his family. He probably didn’t have a penny to his name by the time he got to Fort Nashboro begging for a hot meal and a place to sleep, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the Grove family anymore.
Legend has it that when the Chickamauga Indians attacked the Nashville settlement, they killed my ancestral father as he fought to protect his beloved wife. She grabbed the musket from her dead husband’s hands and continued the fight, killing three Indian warriors herself. Then she fell on top of her husband’s cold, bloody body and held him in her arms throughout the night.
Her name was Bezellia Louise, and for generations since, the first girl born to a Grove has been named in her memory. Although most official historians dispute any claims of her heroics, my father donated thousands of dollars to the Nashville Historical Society with the belief that eventually some fresh, young academic would see the past more according to my family’s advantage. But fact or fiction, I believed in her courage and passion and have always been proud to share her name.
Impossible to put down, Gilmore’s understanding of the quiet corners of life inside the South, the topsy-turvy ways of an old world battling into a new and the unending acceptance of a loving heart make her novels stories for any occasion. But reader beware: these are books that may well change your world.
Gilmore will be speaking tonight at Brentwood Library for their Library Fundraiser Author Event. The event runs from 6:30 pm-9:30 pm. For more information visit the Library’s website at: http://bit.ly/dOtiR2
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