cover image Eat, Drink, and Be from Mississippi

Eat, Drink, and Be from Mississippi

Nanci Kincaid, . . Little, Brown, $23.99 (387pp) ISBN 978-0-316-00915-7

With a sensibility as sweet as a glass of sugary iced tea and a plot as placid as a hazy summer day, Kincaid’s sixth book (after As Hot As It Was You Ought to Thank Me ) tracks the domestic travails of Truely and Courtney Noonan, brother and sister Mississippians who have forsaken sleepy rural life for adventure in California. Courtney is first to head west, finding marital contentment with Hastings, a countercultural hanger-on she meets at a Grateful Dead concert. With a scholarship for San Jose State, Truely soon follows, connecting with a computer whiz, making an Internet fortune and falling hard for Jesse. Both Noonans seem happily married, until Jesse miscarries and leaves Truely. Then Hastings leaves Courtney for a younger woman because he’s “not ready to grow old.” Though they both live in the Bay Area, these rootless siblings seldom cross paths, until Arnold, a black teenager, insinuates himself into their lives. Kincaid has been pigeonholed as a Southern writer, but this unsentimental story about the forging of an unorthodox family has universal appeal. (Jan.)