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Mother Blues
What if your childhood harbored a dire warning about your future? What if your life and the lives of dozens of others, including your future child, depended on you deciphering that warning before it is too late?
Mother Blues is about the maternal relationships we never knew existed, the evil we never expect, and the redemption we never think possible. Subversively feminist and environmental, this is a novel about mothers: those we have loved and lost, those we have never known, and those who have always been there for us whether we have realized it or not. And while this is not a novel about blues music, the blues is everywhere in this story, both grounding it in history and pushing it forward in a slow, rhythmic ache.
As Hurricane Harvey submerges Houston, Davis Payne escapes to the small desert town of Corbin, Texas. He is escaping much more than a 100-year flood. He is escaping a life of guilt and a childhood haunted by death. When Davis was ten, his mother drowned saving him from a boating accident. Years later, his first love burned to death before he could reach her. Davis has no idea of any supernatural connection between these tragedies. He knows only that if he does not leave Houston and stop drinking, he will not live to see his late thirties.
But, of course, there is no starting over; there is only another step deeper into reckoning. Davis soon finds his life inextricably tangled with the lives of others fighting to keep their own heads above water. For Corbin, Texas is not the quiet refuge Davis expects. Beneath its dry, dusty surface Davis finds a town rife with terrible secrets, restless legacies of love and heartbreak, and life-and-death dramas that rival his own.
Olivia DeLuna, for instance, is a beautifully bi-racial loner with a tragic past that she keeps rigorously to herself. Working a collection of low-paying jobs, Olivia lives in a brothel masquerading as a pecan farm called Libby’s Nuts. Its proprietor, Libby Holder, is a colorful, hysterically irreverent madam known after dark as Liberty Cherish, a woman rumored throughout Corbin to have long ago murdered her husband and fed his privates to the coyotes. Parentless from childhood, Olivia’s only goal in life is to own a blues club known in its heyday as Mother Blues.
There are others in Corbin whose stories Davis must make his own: a haunted, childless schoolteacher risking incarceration for murder in order to save a troubled student she is determined to adopt; a former Louisiana prostitute who, having heroically raised and died for her adopted Asian daughter, is ultimately avenged when the girl marries her mother’s killer and exploits the opportunity; and a world-renowned blues diva who unwittingly trades her only daughter for commercial success and who, until her final days, spends the rest of her life desperate for a chance to atone.
Filling the background of these various dramas, is the rapidly unfolding drama of Corbin: a tiny town teetering on the precipice of momentous change. A plan is afoot to transform Corbin with a commercial river walk fed from an engineered diversion of the Pecos River. Except for environmentalists fighting to preserve the habitat of a tiny minnow species, most of Texas is rabidly in favor of the project. Unfortunately, no one realizes that the Corbin River Walk is but a well-conceived, brilliantly executed and violently defended fraud perpetrated by the Russian mob.
If there is one maternal presence that binds together the characters of this novel, living and dead, it is the blues itself. Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Etta James, Big Mama Thornton, Mahalia Jackson, and all the timeless mothers to that quintessentially American genre are here, a soulful Greek chorus singing from the shadows, warning and imploring, offering hope, and bearing witness to lives adrift and in danger of capsizing.
Mother Blues is about the maternal relationships we never knew existed, the evil we never expect, and the redemption we never think possible. Subversively feminist and environmental, this is a novel about mothers: those we have loved and lost, those we have never known, and those who have always been there for us whether we have realized it or not. And while this is not a novel about blues music, the blues is everywhere in this story, both grounding it in history and pushing it forward in a slow, rhythmic ache.
As Hurricane Harvey submerges Houston, Davis Payne escapes to the small desert town of Corbin, Texas. He is escaping much more than a 100-year flood. He is escaping a life of guilt and a childhood haunted by death. When Davis was ten, his mother drowned saving him from a boating accident. Years later, his first love burned to death before he could reach her. Davis has no idea of any supernatural connection between these tragedies. He knows only that if he does not leave Houston and stop drinking, he will not live to see his late thirties.
But, of course, there is no starting over; there is only another step deeper into reckoning. Davis soon finds his life inextricably tangled with the lives of others fighting to keep their own heads above water. For Corbin, Texas is not the quiet refuge Davis expects. Beneath its dry, dusty surface Davis finds a town rife with terrible secrets, restless legacies of love and heartbreak, and life-and-death dramas that rival his own.
Olivia DeLuna, for instance, is a beautifully bi-racial loner with a tragic past that she keeps rigorously to herself. Working a collection of low-paying jobs, Olivia lives in a brothel masquerading as a pecan farm called Libby’s Nuts. Its proprietor, Libby Holder, is a colorful, hysterically irreverent madam known after dark as Liberty Cherish, a woman rumored throughout Corbin to have long ago murdered her husband and fed his privates to the coyotes. Parentless from childhood, Olivia’s only goal in life is to own a blues club known in its heyday as Mother Blues.
There are others in Corbin whose stories Davis must make his own: a haunted, childless schoolteacher risking incarceration for murder in order to save a troubled student she is determined to adopt; a former Louisiana prostitute who, having heroically raised and died for her adopted Asian daughter, is ultimately avenged when the girl marries her mother’s killer and exploits the opportunity; and a world-renowned blues diva who unwittingly trades her only daughter for commercial success and who, until her final days, spends the rest of her life desperate for a chance to atone.
Filling the background of these various dramas, is the rapidly unfolding drama of Corbin: a tiny town teetering on the precipice of momentous change. A plan is afoot to transform Corbin with a commercial river walk fed from an engineered diversion of the Pecos River. Except for environmentalists fighting to preserve the habitat of a tiny minnow species, most of Texas is rabidly in favor of the project. Unfortunately, no one realizes that the Corbin River Walk is but a well-conceived, brilliantly executed and violently defended fraud perpetrated by the Russian mob.
If there is one maternal presence that binds together the characters of this novel, living and dead, it is the blues itself. Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Etta James, Big Mama Thornton, Mahalia Jackson, and all the timeless mothers to that quintessentially American genre are here, a soulful Greek chorus singing from the shadows, warning and imploring, offering hope, and bearing witness to lives adrift and in danger of capsizing.
1036 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 30, 2021
1432 people want to read
About the author
Owen Thomas
62 books68 followersOwen Thomas is a life-long Alaskan living on Maui because life is too short for long winters. He has written six books: "The Lion Trees" (which has garnered over sixteen international book awards, including the Amazon Kindle Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Award, the Book and Author Book of the Year, the Beverly Hills International Book Award and, most recently, a finalist in the Book Excellence Awards); “Mother Blues,” (a novel of music and mystery set in post-Hurricane Harvey Texas); “Message in a Bullet: A Raymond Mackey Mystery,” (the first in a series of detective novels); "The Russian Doll" (the second installment in that series); "Signs of Passing" (a book of interconnected short stories, and winner of fourteen book awards, including the Pacific Book Awards for Short Fiction, also named one of the 100 Most Notable Books of the Year by Shelf Unbound Magazine); and “This is the Dream,” (a collection of stories and novellas that explore that perplexing liminal distance between who we are and what we want). Owen maintains an active fiction and photography blog on Facebook, Tumblr and on his author website at www.owenthomasliterary.com.
For the ninth consecutive year since he has been measuring his commercial success as an author, Owen has not won the Orange Prize for Fiction. Also, to great acclaim, he has not won the Man Booker Prize. Most recently, in April of 2020, Owen was not nominated for a Pulitzer.
Owen makes his home in Alaska and Hawaii. When he is not writing, Owen can be found recreating and taking photographs in the grandeur of these wonderfully picturesque locations. Some of these photos are posted on Owen's photo blog, 1000 Words per Frame.
For the ninth consecutive year since he has been measuring his commercial success as an author, Owen has not won the Orange Prize for Fiction. Also, to great acclaim, he has not won the Man Booker Prize. Most recently, in April of 2020, Owen was not nominated for a Pulitzer.
Owen makes his home in Alaska and Hawaii. When he is not writing, Owen can be found recreating and taking photographs in the grandeur of these wonderfully picturesque locations. Some of these photos are posted on Owen's photo blog, 1000 Words per Frame.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 8, 2021
I’m very sorry to say that I wasn’t able to finish this book. I made it a good way into the book but just couldn’t find enough interest to continue, especially since I thought the book must soon be nearing the finish line only to see that the book is over 1,000 pages long. To read a book that long would really need to have me hooked long before the point where I was. So disappointing. I absolutely loved The Lion Trees and was so happy when I won this new book on Goodreads. Maybe I’ll try this again one day but for now I’m moving on.
December 17, 2021
I’m afraid MOTHER BLUES is destined to become the least-read literary masterpiece of this decade. Due to its length—over a thousand pages—I’m certain no agent nor publisher would consider it, and thus Mr. Thomas resorted to independent publication, with limited distribution and publicity. Such a shame a book this fine will be enjoyed by so few.
While I appreciated the author’s first magnum opus, THE LION TREES, this work is a major leap forward. It is a masterfully constructed tale reminiscent of Tom Wolfe’s epics of social commentary, particularly BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES. Despite its length, the individual chapters are easily consumed, and the book is well-paced and not a bit overwritten. It is a remarkably fast read, compelling from page one, though it does take a bit of patience to appreciate how the multitude of characters and storylines weave together. But it’s well worth the wait, so deft is the storytelling, so evocative and allusive the prose, so captivating and often humorous the dialogue.
I am in awe of the author’s deft choreography of the novel’s extensive cast, an extraordinary and memorable lot, each as consumed with making sense of the past as living life in the present moment. This juxtaposition lends depth and breadth to the story, which feels like it covers lifetimes, though in fact the events transpire in a few months.
Just as the blues is a uniquely American art form, this is a deeply American story, set in the most American of states, Texas. Race, religion, drugs, alcohol, politics, music, natural disasters, sales pitches, corrupt business deals, and obsessive pursuit of obscene speculative profits all play a role in the intricate plot which reaches a remarkably satisfying climax. The storylines are fresh and original, yet ring true to life, and in some cases, iconic.
This is a novel that will stay with you long after you’ve read it. Do yourself a favor and be one of the fortunate readers to uncover this sparkling gem.
While I appreciated the author’s first magnum opus, THE LION TREES, this work is a major leap forward. It is a masterfully constructed tale reminiscent of Tom Wolfe’s epics of social commentary, particularly BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES. Despite its length, the individual chapters are easily consumed, and the book is well-paced and not a bit overwritten. It is a remarkably fast read, compelling from page one, though it does take a bit of patience to appreciate how the multitude of characters and storylines weave together. But it’s well worth the wait, so deft is the storytelling, so evocative and allusive the prose, so captivating and often humorous the dialogue.
I am in awe of the author’s deft choreography of the novel’s extensive cast, an extraordinary and memorable lot, each as consumed with making sense of the past as living life in the present moment. This juxtaposition lends depth and breadth to the story, which feels like it covers lifetimes, though in fact the events transpire in a few months.
Just as the blues is a uniquely American art form, this is a deeply American story, set in the most American of states, Texas. Race, religion, drugs, alcohol, politics, music, natural disasters, sales pitches, corrupt business deals, and obsessive pursuit of obscene speculative profits all play a role in the intricate plot which reaches a remarkably satisfying climax. The storylines are fresh and original, yet ring true to life, and in some cases, iconic.
This is a novel that will stay with you long after you’ve read it. Do yourself a favor and be one of the fortunate readers to uncover this sparkling gem.
November 5, 2021
As a mother I could really relate to this story., it was an interesting read. There is a lot going on in this story that touches on a lot memories that I had when I started a family. It’s worth reading.
May 17, 2022
The book that would never end! I kept reading, and reading, and reading - hoping the status figured by Kindle was somehow incorrect. I won this book from a Goodreads sweepstakes and felt obligated to read and review. The premise of the book sounded interesting - even without being a huge Blues fan. While I was genuinely interested in the fate of many of the characters (there were so many characters), it was just too much. Too many plot threads, too many characters, too many twists, too many connections, too many lofty ideas that Mr. Thomas wanted to communicate. Towards the end I felt like the author even got tired of writing the story and tried to speak in metaphors and analogies and figurative language instead of writing more scenes or dialogue. And then a few other characters just dropped off the page and were never heard from again. My bad, I thought they were key characters but apparently not.
The Acknowledgements was probably the part I enjoyed the most. So, my advice, skip the book and go straight to the Acknowledgements.
The Acknowledgements was probably the part I enjoyed the most. So, my advice, skip the book and go straight to the Acknowledgements.
January 28, 2022
“Mother Blues” is a killer mystery set against both the background and foreground of motherhood. This story links the past with the future, and a childhood omen to adulthood danger. Mothering can come in many forms. Even if you don’t have a biological mother, there can be maternal forces that shape you, from your past and present. Maybe it’s a grandmother from long ago; or a godmother, aunt, or some other mother “figure” not related by blood. The title is perfect for this story because, much like a blues tune, the tale’s pace feels like it’s infused with an almost hypnotic pulse.
Davis Payne flees Houston when Hurricane Harvey descends, and he goes to Corbin, Texas—a small town in the desert. But…what is he really fleeing from? A traumatic past drenched in death and grief. Davis lost his mother in a drowning accident after she saved his life, then lost his first love when she burned to death before he could come to her aid. Is there a supernatural link between the two deaths of the women he loved? Let us just say he drinks to drown everything out, but he’s still haunted. And readers soon discover that the Texas town of Corbin holds more than anonymity; it is a magnet for people in the same boat.
This is a sprawling, intricate drama you can get lost in quickly. The characters seem alive and real, the plot is mysterious and intriguing, and the combination of the two urges you to keep reading to find out what happens with these people and why, exactly, it’s happening. Blues’ legends are part of the story, as well, and the author deftly gives you a feel for the tone and atmosphere. The plot has subplots that take time to play out, so readers shouldn’t expect everything to be handed over all at once. The build is gradual, and the payoff is worth reading the one-thousand-plus pages, yet it doesn’t feel at all like a long book while you’re enveloped in the story.
The tale is multi-dimensional, deep with meaning, and thoroughly entertaining, especially with blues’ legends hiding just behind the curtains. If you like novels with characters that haunt you long after the final page has been read, you will absolutely love “Mother Blues.”
Davis Payne flees Houston when Hurricane Harvey descends, and he goes to Corbin, Texas—a small town in the desert. But…what is he really fleeing from? A traumatic past drenched in death and grief. Davis lost his mother in a drowning accident after she saved his life, then lost his first love when she burned to death before he could come to her aid. Is there a supernatural link between the two deaths of the women he loved? Let us just say he drinks to drown everything out, but he’s still haunted. And readers soon discover that the Texas town of Corbin holds more than anonymity; it is a magnet for people in the same boat.
This is a sprawling, intricate drama you can get lost in quickly. The characters seem alive and real, the plot is mysterious and intriguing, and the combination of the two urges you to keep reading to find out what happens with these people and why, exactly, it’s happening. Blues’ legends are part of the story, as well, and the author deftly gives you a feel for the tone and atmosphere. The plot has subplots that take time to play out, so readers shouldn’t expect everything to be handed over all at once. The build is gradual, and the payoff is worth reading the one-thousand-plus pages, yet it doesn’t feel at all like a long book while you’re enveloped in the story.
The tale is multi-dimensional, deep with meaning, and thoroughly entertaining, especially with blues’ legends hiding just behind the curtains. If you like novels with characters that haunt you long after the final page has been read, you will absolutely love “Mother Blues.”
November 7, 2021
DNF
This a loooong book, over 1000 pages. I got about 10% in and decided not to continue. I couldn’t follow it, way too much going on with different storylines, yet nothing happens. I generally only read novels this long when they are part of a series that I’m hooked on. This book did nothing within the first 100 pages to draw me in or get me attached to any of the numerous characters.
This a loooong book, over 1000 pages. I got about 10% in and decided not to continue. I couldn’t follow it, way too much going on with different storylines, yet nothing happens. I generally only read novels this long when they are part of a series that I’m hooked on. This book did nothing within the first 100 pages to draw me in or get me attached to any of the numerous characters.
November 9, 2021
Complicated
With multiple characters and story lines, you will get lost if you are not careful. I found that if I walked away I lost my place and had to return to the beginning of a chapter. Just not my thing.
With multiple characters and story lines, you will get lost if you are not careful. I found that if I walked away I lost my place and had to return to the beginning of a chapter. Just not my thing.
December 20, 2021
***I won this from a GoodReads giveaway***
This is a DNF for me. I really tried to get interested in it, but it just didn’t catch my attention. I got through 36% of the book and have given up. I may try it again in the future….well, no, I actually probably won’t.
This is a DNF for me. I really tried to get interested in it, but it just didn’t catch my attention. I got through 36% of the book and have given up. I may try it again in the future….well, no, I actually probably won’t.
February 7, 2022
This started out as a good read but as the book went on it just kept getting harder to keep reading
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews