The Great Georgia Dirt Dragon

by J.S. Porter

Tessie's four-year-old son was attacked and killed by an alligator in the summer of 1991. A few months later, what she believes to be the same alligator appears in Tessie's backyard. Her family and friends believe Tessie is coming apart, but for Tessie, bringing the alligator inside her house is the first step in a cosmic journey to find meaning in her suffering.

For seven days, Tessie will walk the unforgiving road of memory backward through her upbringing within the grotesque underbelly of southeast Georgia, her years as the only female student at a conservative seminary, and her tragically short-lived season as a mother.

Part Southern Gothic, part black comedy, The Great Georgia Dirt Dragon reads like Flannery O'Conner by way of Ottessa Moshfegh-a darkly comic and heartbreaking descent into love, loss, and grief-driven madness.

Genres: Fiction

276 pages, Paperback

Published September 29, 2024

Reviews

[Peter Hornberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great novel with a visceral look into the grief of losing a child. Can’t recommend enough.

“The world believes the grieving so frail that a slight breeze - the mere mention of death - can collapse us. But we have already been collapsed. We’ve been brought all the way down. We can’t be reminded of death, it is ever before us, on our backs, a horrible crouching goblin that grows, fixed to our shoulders, sinking us.”

[Sarah Hanns · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gosh, this was good. Incredibly imaginative and beautifully written… this book was hard to put down. It was a haunting portrayal of grief and loss and its detrimental effect on the mind and soul. Had me wincing and tearing up, and I’ll be thinking of this one for a long time.

[Taylor Burdiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Images of Thad became drugs to which I was developing a tolerance and they no longer seemed as if they belonged to me at but were as alien to my own life as an old movie I’d once seen…”

So good

[Kelsey · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF.

Literally got to page 10 and the female main character, a woman in the throes of grieving the loss of her child, is described thusly...

"If Leland had touched me in the last few weeks, he'd be surprised to find my bold ribs and joints beneath the silk wrap of my slip. Other women had always reproved of my smallness under the thin veneer of flattery, so it seemed fitting that when the Darkness set in, my lithe limbs became harsh, my thin and supple frame corrugated and angular...My once full breasts had been partially deflated by motherhood."

I mean, it's a valiant attempt at something more poignant than "She breasted boobily down the stairs." I'll give it that I guess.

Anyway, turns out the author only listed as the initials J.S. is a radical cool guy punk rock pastor and any dude who needs to describe himself that way is not someone whose work I feel like reading. Especially based on the weird ass way he's already described his female protagonist.

[Tucker Dobson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is maybe not what you're expecting if you know that J.S. Porter is a pastor and Christian writer.

For one, it's incredibly ugly, and it will likely seem an affront to you in many ways if you do not know grief and despair like our narrator.

The world our characters inhabit is populated mostly by misshapen and malicious human beings, who hate and judge and lust and abuse and curse and blaspheme. Even many of the children we meet in this book have the same traits, like little goblins swimming through the humid Georgia air alongside their snarling parents. Even our narrator and protagonist is a horror to behold, so crushed and twisted into herself by grief.

This world is punctuated with random acts of violence, rendered in the kind of detail that conveys how pathetic and revolting violence truly is. This does include frank descriptions of violence against children.

For two, the book is not quick to raise the audience out of this ugliness. By the end, in fact, we're pushed even deeper. And when God shows up, it is in a fleeting moment, that may be frustrating to a Christian reader.

But Porter is doing something important. By pushing into the ugliness, the excrement that vandalizes the Creation, he tears the mask off our comfort and tells us something about grief.

The fact presented by this book is that the world has been thrown into chaos, and there is often no meaning at all to the things that happen to us. A character who recalls another character in a much older novel admonishes, "You want an unseen order, a plan. There is no plan. Only chaos."

Grief assailing us in the face of this reality can be like an alligator clamping down on our heads. Won't do much good to hear, "There's a plan in all this" when you're trying to free your cracking skull from the beast's jaws. It may drive us to insanity, this grief and despair, and the unwillingness of others to enter into it. We may push others away as they necessarily move on, leaving us in the mud of our grief. We may begin looking in strange places for comfort, and then what?

I don't know. I have been spared many griefs. That may be why I'm giving this only four stars, for I may be reading a five star book clouded by my comfort. But I do know we are not the only ones weeping over this ruined work of art we call the world. There is Someone else beside us, and He is at work crafting something new, and sometimes, in the middle of our grief, it breaks through.

[Tim Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting. Dark. A beautifully moving exploration of suffering, pain, grief, and deep love.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written and unflinching exploration of grief and suffering. The kind of book that resists easy interpretation and lodges itself deep in your mind, growing and changing with time. Read it.

[Keana Zoradi · Rating 5 out of 5]

That last sentence. Phewwww.

This book encompasses the dark, isolating, intense, and necessary passage of grief. I’ll be thinking about this one for a very long time.

[Amanda Luedeke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to put down but by no means an easy read. This one will stick with me.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written, intense dive into the grief of losing a child. Wow.

[Wesley Ralph · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Read this epic science fiction, Wesley!" "Read this epic fantasy, Wesley!" "Check out this thought provoking non-fiction, man!"

No.

I will read my schizophrenic dark comedy about a child being eaten by an alligator.

It's been a week since I've read this book. When it gets quiet--the noise of the day done, or the solitude of a lonesome drive--I think about this book. It has stuck with me in profound ways that don't matter at all.

Okay, fine, my earlier summary is a bit reductionist. This book follows a woman who's son was eaten by an alligator as she spends a week letting the grief wrack her every fiber. Through the muck and mire, God is real. And, perhaps the old discordant xylophone in the park will be replaced with one that can't help but harmonize. Maybe you have to argue with a reptile for a while first.

Do I agree with every philosophical direction and answer this book offers? No. Will I ever forget it? No.

[bookitlo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful gritty look at a mother’s grief woven together with a talking alligator, religion, and an in your face accuracy of mourning. There were times when I was so uncomfortable reading the graphic depictions that I had to step away, but there in lies the power and pain of death, grief, and memory framed in the human condition- it’s ugliness causes avoidance. But not in this novel- it doesn’t let you look away.

TW *graphic depictions of violence, death, injury of a child among a lot more violence, death, and injury*

[Kendra · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The words are like a heavy stone rolled from a tomb, for I now speak the terrible language of life and death.”

This book beautifully touches on the dark, isolating, unexpected waves of grief and it explores the reality of suffering, while surrounded by other people, so well.

[Joshua Welch · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes I find myself unable to put a book down because I love it and sometimes because I really just don’t want to give up on it. I’m not sure which it was in this case. A story of a grieving mother who seems to have a break from reality. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s too much medication. As you learn about her character you learn about her childhood and how it seemed to fail to prepare her for dealing with emotions as an adult. The strange part in the end about how children of color were used as alligator bait shortly followed by describing someone as a “retard” seemed unnecessary and left me wondering if it was included for shock value or what. I expected religious ideology and I don’t feel that it was over done which was a blessing, no pun intended, but at the end of the day I’m just glad to be finished with this one.

[Emilio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written glimpse into the darkness of death, grief, and suffering. At many points it was gut wrenchingly difficult to read. I cannot recommend it to everyone as the darkness can be hard to look at. Having been a fan of Porter's for a long time, the overall message was clear to me but may not be for everyone else.

[Jess Rashmawy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so excited for this book and it was so good.

[Tyler Klumpenhower · Rating 5 out of 5]

A balm to festering wounds. Thank you.

[Brett R · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a horrible, beautiful story you can't take your eyes off of.