cover image A Place in Mind

A Place in Mind

Dulce D. Moore. Baskerville Publishers, $18 (265pp) ISBN 978-0-9627509-9-1

This first novel by a 68-year-old author is the distilled essence of a way of life that no longer exists. Soon after losing her husband, narrator Mavis recalls her itinerant childhood during the Great Depression, when she, her mother, Fern, and her baby sister, Martha May, accompanied her father, Will Maddox, through Texas and Oklahoma while he looked for work as a ``kidnapper''--a photographer who specialized in taking portraits of children in their homes. Mavis's memories preserve the hopelessness of the events themselves. When life on the road becomes too difficult, Fern takes her and Martha May to live with her relatives, and she learns what it means to be a poor relation. Her recollections of her father's relatives are equally bleak. Although Moore depicts this unusual nomadic life vividly, much of her dialogue is overburdened and tedious. Add to that a liberal sprinkling of such expressions as ``dago'' and ``niggertown''--perhaps true to the times, but unsavory nonetheless--and one is left with a taste that is more bitter than sweet. (Sept.)