Gerry Wilson is a seventh-generation Mississippian, and she says of That Pinson Girl, “In this novel I return to the myths of my childhood and the rural landscape of north Mississippi. I was born in Pontotoc, a little town nestled in the red clay hills of north Mississippi, thirty miles from William Faulkner’s Oxford and far from just about everywhere else.” Wilson’s prose style is straightforward, but the questions and complexities that run throughout That Pinson Girl will be familiar to those who have read Faulkner. It is appropriate that an early draft of the novel was a finalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom Writing Competition.
It is April 1918, as That Pinson Girl opens, and Leona Pinson, age 16 and unwed, is giving birth. The father is known only to her, and his obscurity foreshadows thematic strands that emerge, such as mysteries surrounding paternity and fraternity in the town. There is an almost biblical resonance in some of the novel’s conflicts, in which generations-long familial relationships go unacknowledged to conceal uncomfortable truths.
The father of Leona’s baby is Walker Broom, who courted her before leaving for the Great War. At the time of his departure, Leona didn’t know that she was pregnant; consequently, Walker is ignorant of his impending fatherhood.
Walker is from the middle class (his father is a shopkeeper) and is thus on a higher social plane than the Pinsons, who are almost literally dirt poor, the personification of “country people.” Because of her status as an unwed mother and because she does not name the father, Leona is shunned by the people in the town. It is as if she does not exist when she passes them, a reality that Wilson brings to life with unflinching prose.
Before departing for the war, Walker leaves a note for Leona that her aunt never passes on to her, causing Leona to believe that he no longer has feelings for her. This leads to further misunderstandings that don’t portend well for the relationship. And when Walter returns to town, having survived the war and a case of the Spanish influenza, things grow more fraught. He brings with him a wife, Edith, a wartime nurse who’d helped him recover from the flu. A woman of wealthy Yankee stock, Edith feels disconsolate and utterly out of place in the small Southern town.
For her part, Leona tries to keep her child’s paternity a secret, but this does little to ease her worries. After Edith engages Leona to make clothes for her and Walker’s new baby, Leona worries that Edith will be able to recognize her own baby as Walker’s son. This situation (and other story lines in the novel) conveys the lasting–and potentially devastating–power of secrets, and shows how this power can persist for generations.
But to the novel’s great credit, Leona never comes across as a victim; instead, Wilson makes clear her determination to survive, and to give her son the best life possible. I was moved by her resolve and by Wilson’s vivid and deeply felt writing about her.
Wilson buttresses her themes of tangled social and familial relationships with unsettling historical events. As one example, Leona’s sociopathic brother Raymond is an enthusiastic member of a resurgent Ku Klux Klan. As Raymond becomes more of a threat, Luther Biggs, the son of Leona’s grandfather, William Pinson, and one of his former slaves, looks out for Leona and her child. Notably, William gave Luther “a spirit light” (a kerosene lamp), as if to silently acknowledge their blood connection. Luther in turn gives the lamp to Leona, who breaks it. The destruction of the lamp seems a metaphor for the tragedies that befall generations of the Pinson and Biggs families. As Faulkner wrote in Requiem for a Nun, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Wilson’s writing about this incident, and its larger significance, is powerfully resonant.
As noted earlier, secrets are laced throughout the novel. So are questions. Specifically, Who is the father? is asked about more than one offspring. Not wanting to give too much away, I’ll just say that long-buried (or denied) truths beget conflict, and violence, with heartbreaking consequences.
I have recounted but a few of the complex strands that make up this engaging and deftly plotted novel. Wilson takes on the conflicts at the heart of the story with searing honesty, and with compassion for the central characters. The result is an affecting and thought-provoking read.
Would My Pick be Your Pick?
If you're interested in ________, the answer may be "Yes":￭ Historical fiction
￭ Stories of complicated families
￭ Historical novels of the early 20th century
￭ Racial dynamics in rural Mississippi
