Where Trouble Sleeps

In Listre, North Carolina, in 1950, life is centered around the Baptist church where salvation is as easy as walking down the aisle, and/or Train's place, where you can buy a cold beer to drink while you wait for your oil change or just set a spell. The state highway does pass through, and there's that blinker light at the intersection now, since that awful mule/truck collision that almost crippled Train. But his old bulldog, Trouble, still sleeps in the middle of the road, unless rain is coming. Occasionally somebody from somewhere else stops in town and upsets people, but outsiders should know that even harmless little old ladies keep loaded shotguns handy, and "trouble" isn't just some gimpy old dog. This was fun, although I've show more enjoyed other Edgertons more. He has a dark humor that I really appreciate, and he can lacerate a hypocrite with such compassion that they feel loved. show less

I loved this quirky book - I love most of Clyde Edgerton's books - but I have a suspicion that you have had to have lived in a small Southern town in the 1950's to fully appreciate it. It's the old story - a stranger, in this case up to no good, comes to town. His name is Jack Umstead but he has many aliases and side lines, and lies...beguiling some of the townsfolk and raising red flags with others. Trouble is a bulldog, and also famously locally, a barometer who invariably chooses to sleep indoors when it's going to rain. Stephen Toomey is a small boy who observes an awful lot (in all senses of the word) from his perch on the porch. I found it a rip roaring good story with a lot chuckles, wry truths, and an eye-popping ending. A cast show more of cCharacters I'll remember a long time... show less

A stranger comes to Listre, looking to see what he can shake out for his own profit. In the meantime, the people in the little town are living their lives. Mainly the story is told from the perspective of a six year old boy who spends a lot of time observing his world.

The best thing about this book was the interview put in as an extra where the author "interviews" his slick, trouble-making character, Jack Umstead. Otherwise, the book was generally easy to read, had enough dialect to feel genuine but not so much as to annoy the reader, but overall felt slow and uninteresting. These are characters working hard to maintain their existence, and they have histories and backgrounds, but they mostly amount to mildly interesting. The plot is show more rather thin; this is more of a novel about a place and the people in it. show less