Getting Mother’s Body - Tapa dura

‘Full, farcical...this tale offers a Toni Morrison-style take on the 1960s Black American South.’ Guardian

'Parks wraps the bristling comic touch of Chester Himes and the lyrical mournfulness of Toni Morrison into a tale that touches on the worst of human failings but maintains a deep compassion for its protagonists at the same time.'
Metro

'It's not only the plot that subversively echoes Faulkner's masterpiece As I Lay Dying. Like Faulkner, Parks tells her story through a multiplicity of voices; as many as 20 characters give their slewed versions of the fugitive truth. She has an ultra-sensitive ear for dialogue, though, as you would expect from a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright...Much of the novel demands to be read aloud throatily, between large swigs of bourbon.' Christopher Hart, Daily Telegraph

1950s, in a small southern town in the US, the Beedes represent the lowest of the low. Always struggling to overcome their Beedism, they remain shackled by poverty and their own lack of ambition. Everyone, but sixteen-year-old Billie Beede.

Billy Beede has big ideas about her life. She's had the Beede misfortune to get pregnant by the itinerant coffin salesman. And when he proves to have a wife and seven kids in another town, she determines to try her luck elsewhere.

The answer seems to be in the hem of her mother's dress, her mother who died ten years ago. The rumour is that Willa Mae – Billie Holiday look alike – was the only Beede who made good, and was buried with a pearl necklace and a diamond ring sewn into the hem of her dress.

Billie – and all her relatives – aim to get their hands on this treasure and make something of themselves. What follows is a mad road trip that evokes shades of Faulkner – in its potent earthiness – but also has the approachability and warmth of Alice Walker back when she was writing terrific novels like THE COLOR PURPLE.

GETTING MOTHER’S BODY is gutsy, rich, salty, funny, tragic, and completely original.