cover image On Account of Conspicuous Women

On Account of Conspicuous Women

Dawn Shamp, . . St. Martin?s/Dunne, $23.95 (306pp) ISBN 978-0-312-37997-1

Centering on four women in pre-Depression Person County, in North Carolina, Shamp’s debut novel is slow to gain momentum and interest. Young widow Ina Fitzhugh moves to Roxboro from Virginia to teach school. Guerine Loftis, who specializes in putting on airs; tomboy Doodle Shuford, who runs her family’s farm; and Bertie Daye, a feisty women’s suffrage advocate, worry that newcomer Ina will look down on their smalltown ways—and for most of her first year in town, she does. While various love triangles eventually form and dissolve among several of the four, most compelling are Bertie’s adventures with the American Women’s Party in Washington, D.C. (Her sharp-tongued voice, however, feels forced; she decries, for example, “gotnab namby-pambyism.”) As the novel progresses, the women interact less as they pursue their own goals, reducing the tension, and some of the narrative’s gender- and race-based set pieces can be preachy. But the novel offers a detailed look at a vanished era of feminism and at a rural South that has changed dramatically. (May)