When struggling artist/shoe clerk Caddy Keyhoe stumbles across what may be a lost and untraceable diamond, her first reaction is down-to-earth: Maybe I can sell it. But how odd to be finding it in the gutter now, after last night’s dream of a UFO scattering bright gemstones. Research via Google leads her to the website of melancholy Alec Rix, semi-failed writer and newly-minted UFO authority—courtesy of his published interview with octogenarian Hatchell T. Beckham Sr., retired from farming and strangely eager to discredit the new crop circle on the Beckham property. The crop circle perpetrated by a neighborhood hoaxer. Or by those blazing diamond-shaped UFOs that just about everybody in Hopkins, South Carolina—except old Hatch—claims to have seen…?
As Caddy’s art career takes a magical turn for the stratosphere, Alec’s friendship with Hatch deepens through the old farmer’s tale of his long-lost family. Could there be a book in this? the blocked author has to wonder. But when pursuit of the story sends him blundering into radiant Caddy on the biggest night of her life, priorities immediately change. Because what can it really mean, to “follow a star”? And what does Hawaii have to do with it?
A feet-on-the-ground story with its head in the clouds, Diamonds In The Sky reports from the Unknown with quiet wit, endearing characters, and the speculation that love just might be forever—even if not all diamonds are.
Excerpt
Sometimes Circe had teased Caddy when sufficiently pestered, “Your dad was a musician from India, a sitar virtuoso, real famous in, like, Calcutta.” Or, “I don't guess the name Andy Warhol means anything to you, Caddy, but it's your Brazilian daddy who taught Andy cinematography.” Sometimes he was a sculptor— a Sephardic Jew— other times a Filipino painter. But whenever Caddy's cross-examination became too intense or Circe too irritable, Dad got downgraded to junkie or panhandler or unemployed garbage-scow captain, one-eyed and the son of a Tijuana whore.
It sometimes seemed to Caddy, dark and resembling nobody else in this sandy family, that her mother had loved a whole lot of people, but maybe nobody at all had loved her. Which made Caddy feel guilty because she didn't love her either.
So later on that night right after Circe died— in its deepest two-in-the-morning heart with no noises but the humming of the Kenmore refrigerator coming from the kitchen— when Caddy thought she could hear Roofie grieving behind closed doors, what she experienced was some relief.
What never concerned her until she was eleven were these familiar features she'd beheld in the mirror every day of her life, legacies from that uncertain paternity. They were hers and she felt nothing about them one way or another, not pretty or ugly, merely the means of recognizing which person was herself in the girls' rest room mirror at school. Oh yeah, squinchy eyes, olive skin, there I am.
"What kind of normal people name a baby 'Cadmium' anyway?" Blair Bankhead asked her out of the blue over the sink one afternoon. "You sure you're even white?"
Caddy had never thought much about it. She studied herself in the glass. Shrugged, then snuck a glance at three black girls not ten feet away. What if they've overheard and get mad?
Singe ol' Blair's eyebrows off with their Bics?
That would be SO cool.
Me-tooer Shelby weighed in with her own two cents, "Yeah— hey Blair— we're dealing with a wetback here! Senorita la Cucaracha!" Showing off her Spanish, for which she had diction like Scooby-Doo's. Joined by Blair in screeching mirth.
There was a certain bad word which Roofie said never to say, rhyming with witchesand beginning with B. But Caddy thought that word in the girls’ rest room now, and she thought it hard.
It sometimes seemed to Caddy, dark and resembling nobody else in this sandy family, that her mother had loved a whole lot of people, but maybe nobody at all had loved her. Which made Caddy feel guilty because she didn't love her either.
So later on that night right after Circe died— in its deepest two-in-the-morning heart with no noises but the humming of the Kenmore refrigerator coming from the kitchen— when Caddy thought she could hear Roofie grieving behind closed doors, what she experienced was some relief.
What never concerned her until she was eleven were these familiar features she'd beheld in the mirror every day of her life, legacies from that uncertain paternity. They were hers and she felt nothing about them one way or another, not pretty or ugly, merely the means of recognizing which person was herself in the girls' rest room mirror at school. Oh yeah, squinchy eyes, olive skin, there I am.
"What kind of normal people name a baby 'Cadmium' anyway?" Blair Bankhead asked her out of the blue over the sink one afternoon. "You sure you're even white?"
Caddy had never thought much about it. She studied herself in the glass. Shrugged, then snuck a glance at three black girls not ten feet away. What if they've overheard and get mad?
Singe ol' Blair's eyebrows off with their Bics?
That would be SO cool.
Me-tooer Shelby weighed in with her own two cents, "Yeah— hey Blair— we're dealing with a wetback here! Senorita la Cucaracha!" Showing off her Spanish, for which she had diction like Scooby-Doo's. Joined by Blair in screeching mirth.
There was a certain bad word which Roofie said never to say, rhyming with witchesand beginning with B. But Caddy thought that word in the girls’ rest room now, and she thought it hard.
Buy the book from Amazon
M. A. Harper, a southern farmer's daughter, was once a free-lance commercial artist. But upon her discovery that no picture is always worth 1,000 words, she took the 1,000-word option and ran with it. Her published works include novels, children's plays, nonfiction articles and the online FAINT GLOW BLOG. Fascinated by those thin places where reality seems to give way into something Other, her fiction can be described as Supernatural Lite. Among past and present pursuits are palmistry, skydiving and metaphysics. A guilty pleasure is NFL football and her day jobs have included shoe seller, New York City window dresser, department store sales clerk and legal office receptionist. Her favorite night job was as off-Off-Broadway stage manager for many productions at La MaMa. She currently lives in New Orleans. If asked to define herself in one word, she'll say "interested".
Visit M.A's Website
Visit M.A's Website
Thanks for kicking off the tour!
ReplyDeleteIt's so cool that you're featuring this book! Many, many thanks!
ReplyDelete