Episode 28 - Morning Glory

She's barefoot and pregnant!  He's... awfully close to barefoot!  It's Georgia!  It's 1940!  Chickens!  Old cars!  Manual water pumps!  Dooryards!  BEES!  omg bees


It's LaVyrle Spencer's Morning Glory, a book about not much in particular except the deep meaning of the heart until there's a war and then a... murder framin'?  This book has no nonconsensual sex but it does have a lot of discussion of childhood trauma, the past-tense murder of a sex worker, and some seriously weird slut shaming and then murdering of another woman which is really tonally weird and we expected better of you, LaVyrle.

We read this book because Amazing Human Beverly Jenkins mentioned LaVyrle in a list she so graciously gave us of vintage romances she really liked back when we did our episode on Night Song.  In the future I won't wait that long to listen to the lady because this book is so good except when it makes such weird choices in the last act.

And there's a MOVIE!  Starring, of all people, Christopher Reeve!  Which is incredibly weird casting!  It's one of those weird things you can either rent on Amazon for three bucks or you can watch on the more oddball free streaming places - Tubi, evidently.  Somebody watch us and tell us, wtf Christopher Reeve?  Like he's hot but I don't see him and think "rawboned country boy who probably killed a Texas whore", do you?  It's got a solid... 57% on Rotten Tomatoes with no critic score whatsoever, so clearly we need to find out.

In this episode we discussed Michael Twitty's book The Cooking Gene and this article in the Bitter Southerner, "Dear Disgruntled White Plantation Visitors."  It's a fantastic article and you should read it.