Lovesick

Lovesick was a finalist for the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Debut Fiction. Spanning the 1930s to the present day, James Driggers' evocative Southern Gothic collection introduces the intriguing inhabitants of Morris, South Carolina--a small town where a mix of rich, poor, and in-between co-exist, grappling with desire, ambition, hope, and loneliness. . . Amid a landscaped dotted with farms, trailers, and genteel homes, there lives a talented baker who desperately needs to win a cooking contest but must team up with a down-on-her-heels society matron to do it. . .the Bramble sisters, whose husbands tend to be short-lived and wealthy, but whose latest prospect arrives with complications. . .a widow who becomes dangerously obsessed with a snake-charming televangelist. . .and a lonely florist who will do anything for the sake of a ruthless local mechanic. With wit and insight lurking beneath a palpable air of menace, James Driggers' debut is a tautly plotted, evocative exploration of love--and all that we do in its name. . .

Review :
"Jim Driggers's Lovesick is a collection of novellas that are just as heartbreaking as they are wise, just as beautiful as they are devastating. While spanning nearly the entire 20th century and tackling some of our nation's greatest social and cultural issues, Lovesick anchors its heart to the fictional town of Morris, South Carolina, and its collection of seemingly eccentric citizens whose traumas, loves, and comedic turns simultaneously charm and repulse us, and that's what good - dare I say great - fiction is supposed to do. Lovesick does this in spades. Like Allan Gurganus and Doris Betts, Jim Driggers gives us small town life in a way that reveals big, heartfelt ideas and universal themes. " --Wiley Cash, New York Times bestselling author of A Land More Kind Than Home "In Lovesick, Jim Driggers takes us behind polite surfaces across a century as old plantation land turns into subdivisions, unraveling the concealed tragedy next-door, the romantic yearning behind a tabloid scandal, and the scheming and sacrifice hidden between the lines of a legendary Southern cookbook. Witty, compassionate, yet unrelenting, Driggers knows what ties a fatal loveknot: the object of forbidden love may be indifferent, unworthy, or just plain poisonous, but what matters to the lovestruck is to give all and so find a way to be, however briefly, truly alive." --Lynne Barrett, author of Magpies "We may think we know some of the personages that populate James Driggers' tour de force, Lovesick. Here is the overweight insurance salesman, the sisters jealous of each other, the shiny-hair evangelist, and the faded southern belle. But then we watch them think and do things we could never have imagined. There's a hint of Erskine Caldwell here - with a strong dash of Grand Guignol. We may never understand, but we are convinced. Yes, he gets away with it." --Fred Chappell, author of Look Back All the Green Valley "Like a swiftly moving train rolling through the deep South, Lovesick takes you on an incredible journey filled with history, lies and deceit. I couldn't put it down." --Lisa Jackson, # 1 New York Times bestselling author "Lovesick is aptly titled. These four interrelated novellas, each a bit more twisted than its predecessor, hinge on lovesickness of one kind or another. The characters live in a South where violence blooms like ditch lilies along an unpaved road. Not for the faint of heart, these stories will not quickly fade from the reader's memory." --Wayne Caldwell, author of Requiem by Fire "While James Driggers' ensemble of unforgettable characters are unified by the blood-soaked daggers of lust, greed, and ungovernable passion, Lovesick is ultimately a gorgeous exploration of humanity--our sorrow and hope, loneliness and joy, and above all, love, how it lifts us, and how irrecoverably lost and shattered we are without it." --Patrick Michael Finn "Four powerful, long stories constitute Driggers's debut collection set in various periods in the small town of Morris, S.C., and though crimes are a common denominator, the crimes themselves are uncommon. In "Butcher, the Baker," set in the 1930s, black felon George Butcher, a self-taught baker, partners with ambitious white Virginia Yeager to enter the white-only Mystic White Flour baking contest in Atlanta. The Bramble sisters, Freddie and Jewel, make a killing out of marriage, literally, until a pregnant, unmarried girl comes into their lives, in "The Brambles." When Sandra Maxwell is unexpectedly widowed in "Sandra and the Snake Handlers," she becomes obsessed with TV evangelist Shep Waters. Florist M.R. Vale, the eponymous narrator of "M.R. Vale," is gay in a time and place not known for tolerance, but he manages to avoid trouble until he gets involved with rough mechanic Lonnie Flowers. Each plot line appears to lead to a predictable outcome, but Driggers consistently surprises." - Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW