The Secret of Hurricanes

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 209 pages
• Published by: MacAdam/Cage September 1, 2002
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1931561109
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1931561105
• Book Dimensions: 8 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 11 ounces

From Library Journal
Pearl Starling has always been an object of gossip and scorn in Waterville, NC. During her girlhood in the 1960s, Pearl was emotionally distanced from both parents and then abandoned after her mother died and her father retreated to the bottle. Pearl tried to blend in with other, more "normal," families in the neighborhood only to find that their hidden secrets were far worse than her family's obvious dysfunction. Now 45 and pregnant, Pearl, long ago shunned by the town, is telling her tale to her unborn daughter. Everyone wants to know who the father is, and the Pentecostals want to save her soul in the bargain. One constant in Pearl's life has been keeping track of the Kennedy family and comparing her tragedies to theirs. She boasts, "Unlike some Kennedys, I survived." Williams won the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, and her first novel shows a poet's attention to language and subtext. Recommended for serious readers of contemporary fiction, especially in an academic environment.
Debbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati State Technical & Community Coll. Lib.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Pearl Starling is a source of curiosity in the military town of Waterville, North Carolina. She is a notorious 45-year-old rug weaver whose legendary past is now highlighted by a mysterious pregnancy that has Waterville murmuring about the father's identity. Pearl still lives in the trailer where she grew up, and she remembers with clarity the sandy coolness of its underside as she hid from her father's tirades taking place above. With heartbreaking candor, Pearl tells the tale of her stormy life to the child growing within her womb, and how the search for tenderness led her to accept twisted sexual offerings in lieu of love. In simple and sedate prose, Williams fashions an emotional hurricane that sweeps into the life of a young girl who grapples to hold on to whatever limb is extended to her. Dysfunctional families, murder, and excruciating loneliness are at the core of this melancholy but very well written novel. Elsa Gaztambide
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Reader Reviews
"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it." That was Holden Caulfield in *The Catcher in the Rye* and that's exactly how I feel about The *Secret of Hurricanes.* After reading the book, I wanted to call Theresa Williams up on the phone and ask her stuff and tell her stuff. It's not that the story itself is so very unusual - reminds me a little of *Them* by Joyce Carol Oates or with her clipped, terse sentences, Williams is somewhat like a female Hemmingway, but after reading this book, as well as a short story by Theresa Williams called "Blue Velvis" published in *The Sun Magazine*, I guarantee that you could hand me a pile of manuscripts, all by different unnamed authors, and after reading them, I could pick out hers as soon as I got to it. She's that unusual. I mean, as my 8th grade English teacher used to say, she has a "voice." "I like to be able to reach out and feel life's edges," says Pearl, (the main character), and that's what this book does - plumbs the edges. The whole narrative is a dialogue with Pearl's unborn daughter (Pearl just KNOWS her child will be female). The voice of Pearl Starling, is authentic and unique. Pearl would be dubbed "trailer trash" by many in our society and she knows it, but she doesn't let that kill her soul. She is, as Shakespeare mused, - "a lady more sinned against than sinning." Her narrative isn't a litany of sins against her, however; they're only noted. What she went through changed, shaped and informed her life - but that's all. She hasn't been snuffed out mentally, physically or emotionally. Her pregnancy at the age of 45 is a personal triumph and source of delight for her, and she especially relishes the unsatisfied curiosity of her neighbors as to the identity of the father of her child. The Pentecostals tried to pry the info out of her in the guise of a witnessing call. Pearl had been involved with them when she was 16 and suddenly alone in the world but for an abusive father and a next-door neighbor, father of three daughters in her age range, who gave her guidance and attention when she needed it. In Pearl's memory, a woman of the Pentecostals that she already knew, "...put her hand on my back, raised her other hand, tilted her face heavenward. The old man touched my shoulder and prayed in tongues, that obscure language. I stayed, let them beseach, but told myself, `After this, no more of this touching.' I felt no comfort in it. Just a vast emptiness. Like the daytime sky was inside me. Limitless. Blank. `Just leave me,' I was thinking. `Leave me to this vacancy'". Talking to this unborn daughter, she tells her that "One night, not long ago, I dreamed about your birth. You were a red moon slipped out from some dark corner of the sky. A real piece of sky I could hold. It made me want to forgive the sky. For both its calm betrayal and for its frightful storms. My dream made me want to forgive the sky. A little. `That's right,' I said, `Drink it in. Your life. The air. Use your own mouth to tell the world what you want.' " Why does she need to forgive the sky, you may wonder? Read the book and find out.