Some Go Home Lib/E

by Odie Lindsey

MP3 CD Format An Iraq War veteran turned small-town homemaker, Colleen works hard to keep her deployment behind her—until pregnancy brings her buried trauma to the surface. She hides her mounting anxiety from her husband, Derby, who is in turn preoccupied with the retrial of his father, Hare Hobbs, for a decades-old, civil rights–era murder. Colleen and Derby's community, including the descendants of the murder victim, still grapple with the fallout; corrections officer Doc and his wife, Jessica, have built their life in the shadow of this violent act.

As a media frenzy builds, questions of Hare's guilt—and of the townsfolks' potential complicity in the crime—only magnify the ever-present tensions of class and race, tied always to the land and who can call it their own. At the center of these lingering questions is Wallis House, an antebellum estate that has recently passed to new hands. A brick-and-mortar representation of a town trying to erase its past, Wallis House is both the jewel of a gentrifying 2010s Pitchlynn, and the scene of the 1964 murder itself. When fresh violence erupts on the property grounds, the battle between old Pitchlynn and new, between memorial site and moving on, forces a reckoning and irreparable loss.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Novels, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Southern

Audio CD

First published July 21, 2020

About the author

Odie Lindsey is the author of Some Go Home: A Novel and We Come to Our Senses: Stories. He received an NEA-funded fellowship for veterans, holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is writer-in-residence at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this novel, set in the fictional North Mississippi town of Pitchlynn, and its inhabitants. Told in seven parts, in brief chapters that kept me turning the pages. The prose is gorgeous and the topic timely, e.g. the question of what a town values and chooses to memorialize and remember.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a boom I would recommend. It is as confusing and long. There were times I thought I was following it and others no so much. It was sad and f we mr like it went no where.

[Michelle Hogmire · Rating 5 out of 5]

First Novel Prize Review #7 (thanks to The Center for Fiction and W.W. Norton for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review/expected pub date July 21, 2020):

There are a lot of bad novels about the South—and by bad I mean untrue and unrealistic, seemingly composed solely of stereotypes. Odie Lindsey’s Mississippi-set novel Some Go Home isn’t one of those books at all. In fact it’s quite the opposite—it’s the kind of genuine book about the South that I’m always hoping I’ll find.

The novel is told in seven sections, from the perspective of different residents of the fictional town Pitchlynn. What connects all these figures is a man named Hare Hobbs. Hobbs went on trial for the appalling racially motivated murder of a Black man named Gabe in the 1960s: the result was a hung jury. Now, years later, he’s finally going back for a retrial, which digs up past trauma in a place that—as Faulkner said—has already never been able to leave the past behind anyway. There’s Derby Friar, Hobbs’ estranged son, and Derby’s wife Colleen—an exquisitely-rendered Iraq war veteran, who’s struggling with her mental health and trying to figure out what she wants out of life. There’s Derby’s employer J.P., who’s embroiled himself in a local conflict about rights to a historical building—an attempt to turn the horrific acts committed in the South’s past into a marketable tourist attraction. And there’s Doc: a Black man who’s married to one of Gabe’s descendants. He’s also a prison guard, employed to keep an eye on Hare.

Odie Lindsey lets these characters’ thoughts spin out into parentheticals and elaborate italics; he writes what’s probably the most beautiful description I’ve ever read of a detritus-and-drug-user filled trap house. As well as a relatable date scene at a Waffle House, with beer snuck inside.

Beyond just the characters are essential descriptions of Southern land and history, how the wealthy owners are able to turn the white working class against the descendants of slaves, in order to maintain their power. Odie Lindsey fully captures the South’s complexities in this novel—from downtrodden despair to stubborn hopefulness, and everything in between.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

AUTHOR Lindsey, Odie
TITLE Some Go Home
DATE READ 04/18/21
RATING 4/B
FIRST SENTENCE
GENRE/ PUB DATE/FORMAT/LENGTH Fiction/2020/audio-hoopla/9 hr 46 min
SERIES/STAND-ALONE SA
CHALLENGE Good Reads 2020 Reading Goal 29/120
GROUP READ
TIME/PLACE 2010/MS
CHARACTERS Colleen/veteran of Iraq War, Darby her husband and his father his being re-tried for murder
COMMENTS The world in a small southern town seen through the eyes of a woman veteran dealing w/ her demons from the Iraq war. Darby, Colleen's husband trying to be a good father when he is trying to manage his feelings re: his father's stigma -- being involved w/ a civil rights murder that is being brought to a re-trial. The poor, the history, the escape to Northern Cities, the buying up of ugly homes, the sanctity of Antebellum historic homes… reconciliation between the past and present at a price.

[Patricia Ponder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Odie Lindsey’s Pitchlynn will stay with me. Frankly, I am in awe. He’s a real writer, and he’s chewed off a lot, as my grandmother would say: Race, region (his regions are truly characters themselves), class, prejudice and privilege, white and otherwise. He’s almost prescient in his use of southern symbols (that tree!), and some of his characters’ palpable need to destroy/erase them. But he’s Faulknerian (in a fresh way) in recognizing that the past is never really even past. These are such damaged characters, so brave, so raw and gritty, struggling in a damaged landscape. I was moved to hope for them, but not count on their being around, because, oh, my, Mr. Lindsey could maim or kill them on a dime (and in such creatively disturbing ways!). This is no lazy river, magnolias in the moonlight read. I felt a little bruised after finishing it. Maybe blistered is a better word. Such impact. Such power. To get that reaction from a seasoned reader is beyond mere talent; it approaches genius. Odie Lindsey is a true heart. But this is not a book for the rainbow and roses romance fiction crowd. It is, however, a book for our time and for all time. We must hear from Colleen again! Please ask Mr. Lindsey not to kill or hurt her, OK? And someone please put this novel into Jennifer Lawrence‘s agent’s hands. She was born to play Colleen!

[Darcia Helle]

I tried, really I did. I wanted to love this book.

The writing is almost poetic, with a strong sense of imagery.

But the story... What is it, exactly? I don't know. It's all over the place, choppy, and difficult to follow.

The characters are vague, at best. I wanted to connect with someone, anyone. Instead, I just found myself irritated.

I gave up about a quarter of the way in. Maybe it was my mood. If the premise intrigues you, give it a try.

*I was provided with a review copy from the publisher, via NetGalley.*

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Graciously won a free copy from first reads.

I hate animal violence in books, so chapter 1 started off with a bad taste in my mouth. The sections of this book were all over the place and I couldn't connect with the characters at all.
Some character stories had potential, but overall this book wasn't for me.

[Eva · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. I had a bit of difficulty remembering who each character was and how they were connected. This could be because I was not able to read for long stretches. I found myself looking back often to keep it straight. There were many surprises in this book The writing style was enjoyable.

[J.D. DeHart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literary, detailed, and well worth the read. I appreciate how Odie Lindsey weaves the right elements together (character, dialogue, description) to create a realistic story that is layered and thoughtful.

[Andrew Carberry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved how so many narratives about family, trauma, parenting, history, and race intertwine, and it's perfectly set in the south. I got invested and stayed up reading this even with a newborn in the house!

[Kelly]

Excited for this one.

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts were 3 stars, some parts were 4 stars.

[Dorothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you drive for a bit over an hour southeast from Memphis, you might come across the little (fictional) town of Pitchlynn, Mississippi. Pitchlynn is virtually indistinguishable from dozens of other dusty, hardscrabble, mostly rural towns scattered over the northern part of that state, but to those who live there, it is a place like no other. It is home. The people who live in Pitchlynn have mostly lived there since birth. Most have never traveled very far afield. Some did move away for short periods but have inevitably returned as if they couldn't be comfortable living anywhere else.

One of those who went away and came back was Colleen. She joined the army right out of high school and was eventually deployed to fight in Iraq. She returned home after her service and stayed with her parents. The scenes from that war continued to haunt her. She suffered from PTSD and sought relief in drugs. Her life was seriously headed off the rails until a local beautician befriended her and made Colleen her project. She worked to get Colleen's life back on the straight and narrow and to give her a purpose for living. Part of her plan in accomplishing this was a bit of matchmaking. She introduced Colleen to "good ole boy" (really the best ole boy) Derby Friar. Colleen wasn't interested and repeatedly rebuffed him, but his persistence finally won her over. They married and at the time that we meet them, they are expecting twins.

But Colleen's and Derby's lives are not all smooth sailing by any means. Derby had changed his name to Friar - his mother's maiden name - to get away from association with his father, Hare Hobbs. Back in the 1960s, during the campaign to extend civil rights in Mississippi, Hobbs had been accused and tried for the brutal murder of a local Black landowner, a man named Gabe. His trial ended in a hung jury and the prosecutor at the time declined to retry him. Now Hobbs is eighty years old and justice has come calling once again. He is to be retried for that murder.

Ironically, one of the men assigned to guard Hobbs as he awaits trial is a Black man called Doc and he is married to one of Gabe's descendants. The two converse in the long hours they spend together.

Hobbs also has two other children who haven't disowned him. There is Winnie, Derby's sister, who has a daughter who is the apple of Hare's eye. Winnie maintains good relations with her father and visits him in jail. Then there is Sonny, an older half-brother of the two. Sonny's mother was married to Hare at the time of Gabe's murder. He was a child but he remembers that Gabe drove him and his mother to the station when his mother wanted to escape the marriage. His mother took him to Chicago where he was raised, but now as an adult and a successful businessman he still feels a connection to his father and determines to fly to Mississippi to testify for him because he thinks he can give him an alibi for the time Gabe was killed.

Finally, there is J.P., also from Chicago but married to a girl from Pitchlynn. His wife was touched by tragedy as a child when she and her best friend were playing in an ancient tree and her friend, a daughter of the leading family in Pitchlynn society, fell to her death. She was blamed by the girl's mother for the death and in order to get her away from that judgemental atmosphere, her family moved her to Chicago where J.P. met her as an adult and married her and they had a baby. She had wanted to move back to Pitchlynn with J.P. and her daughter, but J.P. had put her off hoping she would change her mind. Then, while their daughter was still a baby, she committed suicide. The house that she was heir to in Pitchlynn was left to J.P. and finally, he moved there with the baby and hired Derby to help him renovate the house.

This is Odie Lindsey's debut novel and it is a creditable effort. His narrative is told through the individual stories of all these interconnected characters. Their connections trace back in one way or another to the odious Hare Hobbs. The most successful of the character portraits, in my opinion, was Colleen. I really liked her and would have liked to spend more time with her, but the narrative kept veering off into other territories. Also, there were parts of the narrative that depicted cruelty to animals that were difficult. In truth, I scanned past most of those parts. On the whole, though, it was an interesting read and I felt that Lindsey, who is the writer-in-residence at Vanderbilt University, got the portrayal of a small, insular southern town, places that I'm quite familiar with, just about right.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

“It was the dyingest fucking place in America. Nobody cared to save it.” Page 101. That about sums it up. Sounds like the lives of guests on the Jerry Springer Show.

Started out interesting but the deep dives into the characters’ past left me wanting to return to the present. Class and race collide.

And what is home? The title “ Some Go Home” is also the title of a chapter. It’s not about veterans returning home and finding themselves. It’s more like “some can’t escape home.”

[Ellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rounded up to 4 but really a 3.5 Star read for me.
I don't know what it was, but I just didn't gel with anyone in this book. Possibly just me as it has had other better reviews than mine, so don't let me put you off trying it.

[Briar · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no greater compliment that I can give this book than this: I lost my love for the art of literary analysis once I left high school, tired and worn down and too busy working to read or think too hard. I've read books since high school, good and bad, but not a single one until now has driven me to willingly, for no grade or credit whatsoever, annotate a book. I haven't had this intense desire to analyze every bit and piece, every sentence, word, and phrase, of a novel in a very long time. I used to love doing it, did every piece of extra credit I could and engaged in every class discussion. I can't thank this author enough for creating something so lovingly and beautifully crafted that I wanted to break it apart so that I could build something just as great one day. I love writing, but as of late, I think that my writing has suffered from simplicity, laziness, or - as stated - pure exhaustion. When you're ground down by work, illness, and interpersonal conflict, it's sometimes hard to create something beautiful that requires effort. I hadn't realized until reading this gorgeous prose, set in a town I could recognize from my own family's hometowns, with accents I can feel in my mouth and my genetic structure, that I'd been phoning it in. Why describe nails as being chipped when you could describe them so much more evocatively as being "freckled with polish"? What better way to explain the generational trauma and guilt of being related to a racist murderer than by saying "Complicity, it seemed, was on Derby like a bruise, in him like a gene." From describing something as being "cored with rot" rather than simply rotted, by saying "stress cracks jittered the lime plaster walls", the words in this book feel like paintbrush strokes on an antebellum Southern portrait. I told my father that reading this book feels like sitting under a shade tree in August on my cousin's ranch, the world around me quiet and still but for the swishing of the leaves, the air so hot and heavy that it feels like a blanket. I read this book for three hours and didn't notice time passing. Reading this book feels like being home, in the South, though I'm from Texas rather than Mississippi.

It also feels like home in the subject matter. I can relate to several characters here, from Dru, who wanted so badly to return home, who loved Mississippi for its sun and its nostalgia, to Gabe, reluctant to leave because his family had earned the right to stay, who deserved it more than the whites who wanted him to go. I relate to that feeling of being chased out of your own home and being stubborn to stay, afraid to change, even when it might be best. Even today, in the South, there remains the debate of 'if you don't like it, just leave', and the question of who actually belongs here. The truth is, it isn't an easy thing to answer. Black Americans deserve to be landowners and have their home and place in the South more than anyone, because the South as it is would never exist without them. Even still, they are made to feel so unwelcome that it often isn't safe or comfortable to stay, driven out by entitled white people who believe the land to be theirs gifted by God. This book displays masterfully the nuanced feelings of people who live in, and leave, the South, from white to black, and how the rot and stain of racism snakes its way through the veins of Southern culture and touches everyone. It shows how people become radicalized into hatred, how one act of hatred can cause another, how it becomes a cycle of distrust, resentment, and imbalance. It shows the warped, nasty perspective of the white people of the civil rights era, and how class and money was weaponized, how the ruling class convinced poor whites that their black counterparts were more their enemies than their peers, even though the ones keeping everyone poor were the rich. This attitude is pervasive today, even as I type this. I see it all around me. Poor whites resent black people for, as they've been convinced, draining resources and asking for too much, while poor black people resent poor whites not only out of their own generational trauma, but for having opportunities not given to them and seemingly squandering them. In the end, the rich get richer, and no one goes after them because they've successfully driven a wedge and caused working class infighting.

It's unfortunate that this book is timeless. It's unfortunate that, save a few words generally considered in poor taste to use save for the trashiest of racists, this book could have been written in the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the 10s, and even today. I don't know how much longer this book will remain relevant for the dark side of the culture of the South. I don't know how much longer my home will sit on a rotten foundation before we've all had enough and tear it down to rebuild. I don't know if we have the tools, or the resources, or the collective willpower. But if we don't, if we only let the facade of it stand while the floors disintegrate and the roof caves in, it will never be sustainable. There is a tentative, surface level peace in many parts of the South, but the roots remain. We may have equality to some perspectives, but it's as much of a sham as the history in our public school textbooks. I can teach my children to be good people all I want, but they will always have a better shot at life than their black classmates, and I can't control what they learn outside of my walls. All I can do is whatever I can, and hope that more people than not do whatever they can, too. One person cannot fix the South. Martin Luther King Jr. did not start or end the Civil Rights Movement, and Rosa Parks alone did not end the segregation of buses. They were both parts of giant networks of people, all working together, all inching forward as a giant mass until it could not be pushed back anymore.

We may not all be Hare Hobbs or Wallises, but if we don't do something about them, we're all just as complicit as they are. I am a white woman whose entire family line is from Texas. My family were not plantation owners, but sharecroppers, poor whites. And yet, we benefitted from the economic benefits of slavery, as did every single person in America, in the WORLD. Complicity is on all of us like a bruise. And for white Southerners, especially, it is in us like a gene. We cannot rewrite that, as we cannot rewrite history. But we can fight it and do the right thing. We can do what we can, and hope one day, things will be as equal as the facade suggests.

[Catherine Mincy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parts of this were incredible and I liked more than I disliked. However I felt like there were too many unresolved threads going on. I get it that sometimes the conclusion is that there are no conclusions, but for example, the whole plane crash/Sonny thing felt like it was thrown in extra and then not tied in or brought to a conclusion adequately.

However I thought he hit the young woman veteran in a small Mississippi town spot-on, just would have liked more of this line of thought.

I will be watching with anticipation for more from Odie Lindsey

[Casey Kittrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the author's excellent short story collection, and was excited to see that one of the characters in that book is central to this one. I tore through the first 2/3 of this book in a couple days, then found myself rationing the last few sections. The way it unfolds, with more folds (if that’s the right word) than I imagined, is both dramatic and perfectly controlled. You will want to talk about this book with a friend, so buy them a copy, too, and read it simultaneously.

[wade · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtful novel that mines deeply into class and race in the deep South. The central characters are "Hare" (and his family) a man in prison for the murder of a black man and Colleen an Iraq War veteran who comes back home and tries to blend back into life there. There are a multitude of interesting characters who are connected by blood and personal history. I believe the novel is a pretty accurate portrayal of the dynamics in Mississippi during the late twentieth century.

[SA Whiting · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the characters and how their stories were interwoven in the plot. The story is both timely and timeless — racism, monuments, Southern traditions, people who stick in your mind after you finish the book. You will love Colleen.

[Lynelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want a beautiful, poetic and genuine book that makes you think, laugh and buzz with elaborate details, then pick this book up. Lindsey has a way with story telling that makes you wish you sat by a fireside camp with him.

[Mary Tharp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this story.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful writing that I found evocative.

[Rochelle White · Rating 5 out of 5]

really good story of small town southern life. You get lost in the story and characters and just keep reading and reading until the end.

[Kerry Dooley Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good read. My interest in the book never lagged. I didn't connect deeply with the characters.

[Annalouise Myers · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too many unfinished story lines. Confusing and incomplete. Writing is very well done

[Aly Banys · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a huge fan. Not a page turner and it took a little bit of time to read but I did like it.

[Brent Seheult · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the book, however; it is misleading by the title. I thought it was a book about combat and it does touch upon that to an extent.

[Chantel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unsure of where the story was going

Hard to stay engaged

Not sure what I thought the book was about but it was on my too read list. Somehow darker and lighter that I thought I would be at the same time. Probably because I didn't know what it was about (darker) felt like it barely scratched the surface of the story (lighter). It left me a bit confused on what the author was trying to do with the book, what message he was trying to convey.

[Roisleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This started off great, but I think the author tried to do too many big, flashy things in the middle and at the end. It would have been perfect to just be a story about the complicated emotions and lives of multiple generations of families in this town. No big explosions or shocking scandals needed!