Book of the Week: The Wilde Women

Paula Wall's The Wilde Women, about the lives of the residents of Five Points, Tennessee, begins on Black Friday in 1929 when Pearl Wilde catches her fiancé doing the nasty with her sister Kat in the family barn. To add insult to injury Kat is wearing Pearl's shoes and the rakish Bourne Cavanagh's response to being caught is a drunken, "Please, darlin'. Give me just one more minute." Needless to say Pearl is both hurt and angry, leaving town on the next train not to be heard of for years except for the monthly postcards she sends her sister from the four corners of the globe. Those postcards are devoured by the town gossips before they even reach Kat's hands and they always contain the one same sentiment, "Kat Wilde, I still hope you burn in Hell!"

"The sisters dove headfirst into this world on fire with life and expectation...Hair black as midnight, eyes blazing blue, they were so bright white hot they hissed when you touched them.

In school they knew the answer before the question was given, broke the hearts of boys they never noticed, were the envy of rich girls who had it all. Could have had any man they wanted. Could have been anything they set their minds to. But like their mother and their mother's mother before them, the Wilde sisters took the path of most resistance. At every crossroads in life, there is always one right choice. Inevitably, Wilde women go left." [p 1]

The talk of small town Five Points since the day their grandmother left rich and adoring Cyril Rudolph at the altar, the Wilde women march to the beat of their own drummer. When Pearl returns home--gorgeous, successful, mysterious--she has plans not only for revenge but for a scandalous new business venture. As the story of Pearl, Kat and whiskey distillery heir Bourne unfolds so do the lives of their friends in neighbours in Five Points, a sad town weighed down by both the Depression and Prohibition.

I grabbed this book in hardcover for $5 after being attracted by the cover, but having never read anything by Paula Wall I didn't know what to expect and truthfully wasn't expecting much. I can say I was more than pleasantly surprised. Sure, the stories contain some cliches, but there were also some laugh-out-loud moments and I found myself drawn to the flawed characters. Wall has a talent for drawing you into her story, whether it is a feud between two sisters, a headstrong rich man trying to land a volatile Wilde woman, a tale of ghosts and curses that stretches back two generations, or the simple disintegration or reigniting of a marriage. I'd recommend this one.