How I Left the Great State of Tennessee and Went on to Better Things

Rating:
Summary: Ugh, no thank you!
Review: Oh good- another girl-stuck-in-small-town dreams-big-escapes-with-dark-stranger book. Just what the world needs. This story has been done to pieces, by other, better writers. Blah blah diner robbery, money in a moosehead, Elvismobile blah blah blah coming of age. I found it very easy to put this book down and walk away.

Rating:
Summary: Looking for the better things
Review: The cover of Joe Jackson's new novel and its name -- How I Left the Great State of Tennessee and Went On to Better Things -- leave prospective readers curious, breathless and a bit guarded.
There's an adventure to be witnessed here, the title obviously says.
And it's going to be a long one.
But, given the fact that someone is leaving the "Great State" of Tennessee and going on to "Better Things," and that "someone" seems to be a seductive, shapely young woman with a soft spot for big, pink cars, one wonders if the adventure is going to be a hokey, overdone and never-arriving coming-of-age tale?
The first few chapters do little to calm fears of melodrama.
The 16-year-old heroine, Dahlia Jean, lives in a Tennessee town called Wattles. It's a name one simultaneously makes fun of and feels sorry for as the image of its synonym, Waddles, sticks in the mind:
See the penguin, rocking side to side, struggling to move forward?
See the young woman, placating Mama, Boyfriend-wanna-be and Boss, struggling to move forward?
Mama's in bed, nursing supposed injuries sustained when two strangers threw her from a truck she had not-so-innocently stepped into. ("She gave a detailed description of those drivers -- too detailed, in fact, for family consumption -- in the Wattles Daily Optic," says Dahlia.)
Boyfriend-wanna-be, fond of watching drive-in movies and grabbing Dahlia's knee, drives a "glued-together truck" and has a "lump in his britches...early in the morning."
Boss owns the diner where Dahlia took over Mama's waitress job. He lusts after alcohol and Dahlia, but loves the wife who left him for another man.
The day of September 21, 1961appears to be more of the same: "Someone had run over a guinea hen at the entrance of the square, and somehow I identified," says Dahlia. "The poor thing lay in the road and twitched, not quite dead."
To make the dreary days bearable, Dahlia dreams about Jesse James robbing her town bank. As he turns to leave, she shouts "Take me, too!"
"He plucked me off my feet and plopped me behind him in the saddle. We rode west, past Knoxville, Nashville, Memphis, over the Mississippi, through the Ozarks and onto the plains. I wrapped my arms about his waist and held on. As I dozed and dreamed of freedom, the blood sang in my veins."
Then suddenly Dahlia's daydream turns dark: A figure appears in the distance and strides toward her and her bandit.
He has a gun.
The make-believe foreshadows the heroine's fate and the book's over-the-top encounters.
As night has fallen on Sept. 21, Dahlia and her boss are robbed by two men driving a pink Cadillac convertible. Twitch, the senior of the two and the father of the younger, Cole, spent time in jail with the boss' former business partner. He's been told the boss has hoarded big money for years, and he's come looking for it. If no one's going to tell him where to find it, he'll just have to shoot Dahlia.

Suddenly Dahlia is like Nancy Drew. She figures out her boss' hiding place, gets the money (after a good fight), and convinces Cole to leave with her instead of Twitch.
The chase is on: Twitch, with Mama and Boyfriend-wanna-be in tow, goes after Dahlia and Cole, and the police go after Dahlia -- thinking she's a robber and murderer.
Dahlia and Cole quickly become lovers, and while they don't always manage to stay one step ahead of their pursuers, they do slip through their fingers time and time again.
Along the way the two assist a wife who fears for her life, but do more harm than good. They join the Freedom Riders, but again do more harm than good. They're thrown in jail, washed away in a flood, photographed for a newspaper and, later, on her own, Runaway Dahlia reluctantly offers tutelage to a junior runaway.
Plus more.
In the meantime, Twitch, who alternates with Dahlia in narrating the story, robs a bank, coaches a chicken in a cockfight, joins the Ku Klux Kan and falls for Dahlia's mother.
Plus more.
Late in the book, Twitch finally discovers the girl's destination: Key West, where her father is rumored to be. He left years ago, the day after he told Dahlia, "I'll never leave you, Princess."
Dahlia recounts the day in a half-page in chapter one. It's a touching scene with father and daughter fishing near a dam.
"The spray rolled over us like a blessing," she remembers. The father is concerned when the young girl asks if he's thinking of leaving.
"All adults had troubles, he said: Ours just happened to be a chronic lack of dough. Trouble was a normal part of life and the best course was to swim with it. He bent forward and looked in my face. 'What're these, tears?'
"'No Daddy, only spray.'"
Jackson, a five-time Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer from Virginia Beach, is at his best here and when writing about love in all its forms.
Twitch moves beyond caricature when he longs for Dahlia's mother: "I watched in horror as my hand reached up on its own to brush back her hair. I caught the traitor thing before it did much else..."
And when he reflects on parenthood: "The job is fairly easy at first -- you keep the brat in food and diapers, maybe a warm blanket, and most dads can handle this since there's not a lot of room for confusion. But when the kid grows up, it gets harder. You gotta teach him right from wrong. But how to do that, if you're not so sure yourself?"
Dahlia's mother becomes real as well when she shows her loving heart during her reunion with the man who left her:
"We really loved each other, didn't we, Burma," he says.
"She smiled, real sad. 'We did at first, that's true.'
'You think...maybe...Dahlia remembers?'
'I don't think she's ever forgotten,' Burma replied."
The characters of How I Left the Great State...want love, not adventure.
But Jackson largely suppresses their feelings with activity, and because of this, the book is best read as an extended screenplay -- perfect for a Memorial Day movie release and destined to become a summer blockbuster. Movie fans who shun emotions and soak up action would cheer on both hero and heroine and eagerly await the sequel.

Rating:
Summary: A very fun read!
Review: What a fun read! Jackson weaves a fast, fun story together with a cast of interesting and unusual characters to make a very entertaining novel. The story holds your attention right up to the surprise ending. Definitely a good choice when you want a book that you can climb into and escape everyday life for a while!