Miss Woman

Rating:
Summary: Confronting ghosts
Review: Ann Vaughan Richards has given actual words to that 'Old South' mystique that I have always lived, known, and confronted with a love/hate relationship. Her vivid descriptions of objects in a room for example, evoke my own experiences and I joyfully read her paragraphs for even more parallels. Sensitivity in characterization abounds. There is a true respect for the customs; whether they be good or bad. Mysterious storyline woven with polished detail is a rare delight. However, I enjoyed her glimpses into the psychology of racism that grips some of her characters.She says it best with 'facades that protect dignity'. Due credit is also given to those characters that either changed or never allowed the prejudgement of others to poison their hearts. I grew up in Montgomery during the turbulent and confusing late 1950's. Therefore Ann Vaughan Richard's novel was nostalgic, therapeutic, and hypnotically descriptive. I loved it. Superb work, Ann! Al Kratzer

Rating:
Summary: A Celebration of All Things Southern
Review: Ann Vaughan Richards' first novel is a lush celebration of all things Southern: a tale as rich as homemade pecan pie and as tangled as a kudzu vine.
"Miss Woman" is set in fictional Victoria, Ala., where nothing much has changed in decades. When 45-year-old Willie Kay, newly divorced, returns to her hometown to start over, she finds that litttle has changed since her departure. Even the unyielding attitudes of the local folks seem frozen in an earlier, less enlightened, era. Old loves and old hatreds are still firmly in place here, and old secrets still fester underneath a veneer of politeness.
The town's rigid social order is cracked wide open with the arrival of Miss Woman. She appears without warning in the upstairs window of the Victoria Thrift Store on a steamy summer day, and as she bangs chords on an upright piano and sends her "low down, gut wrenching...You Can Have Him I Don't Want Him Didn't Love Him Anyhow Blues" floating across the town square, she embodies everything that the town is not. Her ample body shimmers in rainbow satins, her smiling face is framed by a turban; she is flamboyant, mysterious, uninhibited, spontaneous and generous.
These qualities alone would be condemnation enough for Glenna Bedsole, a vicious gossip bent on unraveling the lives of her neighbors. But even more alarming, in Glenna's eyes, is the fact that Miss Woman is black.
Glenna's own father was a notorious bigot whose ruthlessness earned him a bullet through the heart long ago. When the embittered woman launches a campaign of personal destruction against her fellow townspeople, probing her neighbors' best-kept secrets, a late-night visitor uses a shotgun to silence her. As the evidence around the case slowly unfolds, the list of possible suspects grows, and a small-minded band of residents turn suspicious eyes on Miss Woman.
Unsuspecting Willie Kay finds herself at the heart of a struggle that will transform her own life, and change the townspeople of Victoria forever.

Rating:
Summary: A Celebration of All Things Southern
Review: Ann Vaughan Richards' first novel is a lush celebration of all things Southern: a tale as rich as homemade pecan pie and as tangled as a kudzu vine.
"Miss Woman" is set in fictional Victoria, Ala., where nothing much has changed in decades. When 45-year-old Willie Kay, newly divorced, returns to her hometown to start over, she finds that litttle has changed since her departure. Even the unyielding attitudes of the local folks seem frozen in an earlier, less enlightened, era. Old loves and old hatreds are still firmly in place here, and old secrets still fester underneath a veneer of politeness.
The town's rigid social order is cracked wide open with the arrival of Miss Woman. She appears without warning in the upstairs window of the Victoria Thrift Store on a steamy summer day, and as she bangs chords on an upright piano and sends her "low down, gut wrenching...You Can Have Him I Don't Want Him Didn't Love Him Anyhow Blues" floating across the town square, she embodies everything that the town is not. Her ample body shimmers in rainbow satins, her smiling face is framed by a turban; she is flamboyant, mysterious, uninhibited, spontaneous and generous.
These qualities alone would be condemnation enough for Glenna Bedsole, a vicious gossip bent on unraveling the lives of her neighbors. But even more alarming, in Glenna's eyes, is the fact that Miss Woman is black.
Glenna's own father was a notorious bigot whose ruthlessness earned him a bullet through the heart long ago. When the embittered woman launches a campaign of personal destruction against her fellow townspeople, probing her neighbors' best-kept secrets, a late-night visitor uses a shotgun to silence her. As the evidence around the case slowly unfolds, the list of possible suspects grows, and a small-minded band of residents turn suspicious eyes on Miss Woman.
Unsuspecting Willie Kay finds herself at the heart of a struggle that will transform her own life, and change the townspeople of Victoria forever.

Rating:
Summary: Southern Charm
Review: I love books with descriptions so vivid, I can smell the flowers, hear the rain, and feel the sweat drip down my neck. Miss Woman by Ann Vaughan Richards is exactly that kind of book. And her characters!! If you've ever felt overwhelmed or outflanked by your family, you will feel an immediate connection with Willie Kay, the narrator. The rest of the towns people of Victoria quickly become people as well, leaving you at times laughing at their antics and then completely shocked by their behavior. But don't make the mistake of dismissing this book as a light, frothy description of southern charm. This book also tackles serious subjects like adultery, abortion, racism, and murder. The framework of the novel is a murder mystery but it is really an in-depth look at the characters in a small southern town and their interactions with each other. I especially appreciated Ms. Richards' treatment of race relations. Although she does describe the racism most associate with the South (white man kills black man for being "uppity"), she also explores another, far less publicized side of these interactions. The love and care provided for an aging black woman by her "white family" and the courageous determination of a group of white people to provide Miss Woman a safe place to live are vivid counterpoints to the racism brutally portrayed in other parts of the book. Even a week after I have finished this book, I find myself revisiting the town of Victoria in my mind, wondering about the little mysteries left unsolved and the big question of "What happens next?" Good books always leave you wanting more and Miss Woman has done an excellent job of just that. So, grab a comfy chair, turn on your favorite blues music and let Miss Woman take you to that rainy, hot day in June when the blues notes first started falling from a second story window. . .

Rating:
Summary: Miss Woman
Review: In the late 1980's, a stranger comes to town and settles into an apartment above the local thrift shop. A large black woman who dresses in rich jewelry and shimmering fabrics of red, green, and gold, Miss Woman exudes "presence" and mystery. Who is she? Why has she come to this sultry Alabama town? Why, from her open window, does she lean out and sing the blues?

On the surface, the town of Victoria appears respectable enough. To be sure, it harbors eccentrics like O.K. Maylo, who lives with his dog in a kudzu-covered school bus; Vereena Lucille, a former trapeze artist now almost inaccessible beneath mounds of body fat; and Lurlene Langford, who, according to local legend, calls out at night to visions of her dead brother. For the most part, however, Victoria seems like any other small town. One by one, the inhabitants emerge-the sheriff and deputy; the mayor, beautician, and jeweler; the mute child Callie; the renegade clan "strong enough to steal, but too weak to work"; and Willie Kay, a recently-returned divorcee through whose eyes much of the story is filtered. The reader empathizes with the Morrows, who grieve for their deceased daughter; the faithful Claude, whose aged body is "shrunken to an everlasting chill"; and even Granny Lou, who, until her dying day, will never know how she has managed to raise such a wasteful family. In Victoria, adult children still show up for family dinners, and an ice-cold Coke can transform a bad day.

It is Glenna Bedsole, however, the embodiment of small-mindedness and mean-spiritedness, who reveals the town's darker underside. Oppressed by financial difficulties, prejudices, and family skeletons, Glenna at first strikes out at Miss Woman and then, as her antagonism mounts, begins a tale-bearing crusade against the neighbors. Since most of Victoria's inhabitants are living "critical deceptions and essential lies," Glenna touches first one nerve and then another. Methodically, she exposes and alienates the townspeople--until she is discovered--dead.

Who killed Glenna Bedsole? This is a second mystery. Read as a whodunit, MISS WOMAN becomes a study of character and possible motive, a crime novel replete with likely suspects. Still, MISS WOMAN is much more than a detective novel. Even as it captures the flavor of small-town life--the gossip and prejudice, the interconnected web of relationships, the intrigue, the fear of being "found out"--it reveals a more fundamental conflict. For years, Victoria has resisted change, maintaining its identity--and stability--as a closed, insular system. As she sweeps into town like a healthy Earth goddess, Miss Woman brings with her both opportunity and threat:

"We didn't have a place for her in our society. She didn't fit our labels. She was dark-skinned and sensuous, and she was threatening us by her boldness. She was unsettling our world and exposing the insecurities that lay lightly buried under its ordered surface."

Through her spontaneity and humanity, Miss Woman models a new, more authentic behavior. In a very real sense, she has come to give life. To receive her gift fully, however, Victoria must be willing to relinquish at least some of its long-cherished patterns. It must forge a link to the outside world and open itself to change. This is the challenge Victoria faces. This is the theme MISS WOMAN explores.

Rating:
Summary: Uncovers emotional levels unplumbed by most of us
Review: Miss Woman is Ann Vaughan Richards' first novel. Married to a scientist, a self-proclaimed recluse, A.V. Richards is a member of a large Alabama family who she says all gathered in the same spot...for generations.

Victoria is a town where everyone knows each other and their business. Told from the viewpoint of Willie Kay, a divorcee who has returned to the bosom of her family, Miss Woman at first seems to be a typical Southern story about racism. "Miss Woman" is a sassily dressed African-American woman who suddenly appears on the scene of Victoria. When she throws open her window to treat the residents of Victoria to an impromptu, loving blues performance, people don't know what to think. Then Callie Thomas runs into the street and gets hit by a car, and Glenna Bedsole, whose personal problems leave her deranged, is suddenly murdered. Willie Kay is in the middle of the action, but feels powerless:

"We didn't know what happened, but Glenna Bedsole knew and Callie Thomas knew. And, sitting in the alley beside the Victoria Dry Cleaners, O.K. Maylo knew. He had seen it all. He had seen Glenna Bedsole heap curses upon Callie's head, and he had seen her enter her store and come back with a handful of wire coat hangers, he had seen her throw the coat hangers on Callie's unsuspecting body, and he had seen Callie start in fright and run into Mr. Stroud's car. O.K. Maylo knew, all right."

As Ms. Richards' quirky but fascinating tale unfolds, her equally quirky but completely compelling characters roll out one at a time. Her tale is slow and ponderous; the type of story that appeals to any woman on a mission of self discovery or any man who craves insight into the workings of the female mind. Miss Woman operates on many levels: social; political; emotional; intellectual; philosophical. It is as much a tale that Oprah would like as it is a tale with a whodunit theme.

Miss Woman showcases a strong Black role model with the ability to make our hearts sing. Willie Kay is probably more a character whom most of us can relate to. The story itself is fascinating. Willie Kay herself uncovers emotional levels unplumbed by most of us. A great tale.

Shelley Glodowski
Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: Timely Topics
Review: Prefering to read non-fiction and finding enough "drama" in my own life to fill a book, I rarely read novels for pleasure. Imagine my surprise when I couldn't put down Miss Woman! Yes, the characters are colorful, the setting provocative, and the plot intriguing, but it's the mysteries left unsolved that linger and inform one's contemporary world, especially here in "Florida's Great Northwest." Florida's best-kept secret is rapidly becoming less so, thanks to unparalleled expansion by the St. Joe Co. Like Victoria, our own sleepy, very-stereotypical, small Southern towns like Apalachicola, St. Joe, Mexico Beach...even larger Panama City...are struggling with growth's purported opportunities. Miss Woman's Glenna embodies the "insanity" that is symptomatic of the "threats" of change and loss of power/control. What is especially provocative is the reader's own examination of herself/himself as both akin to and murder suspect of Glenna. What lingers for me is appreciation for being at this place in Florida's evolution...at this time. I find myself challenged to be less apologetic about all that makes my culture rich and unique and to take a more active role in preserving worthy heritage while embracing those dimensions of change that enrich it and move us forward constructively. A compelling book.

Rating:
Summary: Mystery and Intrigue in the Small-Town South
Review: Small-town life in the deep South can seem quiet and unchanging. But scratch the surface and you'll find mystery and intrigue, pain and compassion, wisdom and wonder. Ann Vaughan Richards, in this hard-to-put-down first novel, weaves those elements into a compelling story of one woman's impact on a town that is both changed and unchanging over the generations Richards sketches.

Glenna Bedsole got her head shot off - - we know that much. We soon know, too, that nearly everyone in town had good reason to pull the trigger, and since we're not altogether sorry about Glenna's untimely end ourselves we become part and parcel of the town.

Along the way of this remarkable romp we rejoice in Miss Woman's gutsy flamboyance, we applaud narrator Willie Kay's bravery and wince at her naivete, we embrace Granny Lou and Claude and O.K. Maylo and the Peaden sisters, we watch with fascination the rich and wondrous assortment of other characters who inhabit this place of sudden storms and blistering heat - - and we take every one of them into our hearts. Even Glenna, with her blown-off head. When we discover what Glenna put up with from Hughes, why, that was ENOUGH to turn a body plum sour, and Glenna was a sour soul for sure.

Miss Woman is a tale of the South. But like so many well-told stories it is also a tale of the potential for good and evil that lies within us all, and the courage of ordinary people who work to sort them out. Especially the courage of the person who did, indeed, blow off Glenna Bedsole's head.

You'll be glad you happened to be there when Miss Woman first sang the blues.