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In his second novel, Judson Mitcham, with plain but elegant language, creates an emotional impact rivaled only by his critically acclaimed debut novel, The Sweet Everlasting (Georgia). Sabbath Creek is the story of Lewis Pope, a fourteen-year-old boy thrust into an adult world of heartache and brokenness. When his beautiful but distant mother takes him on an aimless journey through south Georgia, the cerebral and sensitive Lewis is forced to confront latent fears-scars left from the emotional abuse of an alcoholic father and the lack of comfort from a preoccupied mother-that crowd his interior world.
At the heart of the journey, and the novel itself, is Truman Stroud, the quick-witted, cantankerous owner of the crumbling Sabbath Creek Motor Court, where Lewis and his mother are stranded by car trouble. His budding friendship with the ninety-three-year-old black man is his only reprieve from the mysteries that haunt him. Despite his prickly personality and the considerable burden of his own personal tragedies, Stroud becomes the boy's best hope for a father figure as he teaches Lewis the secrets of baseball and the secrets of life.
Sabbath Creek is more than a coming-of-age novel. And while Mitcham provides a nuanced look at the relationship between a white adolescent boy and a black old-timer, his second novel transcends the tired theme of race relations in the South. This compassionate, smart, powerful work of fiction touches the pulse of the human spirit. It travels from the ruined landscape of south Georgia and takes us all the way through the ruined landscape of a broken heart.
At the heart of the journey, and the novel itself, is Truman Stroud, the quick-witted, cantankerous owner of the crumbling Sabbath Creek Motor Court, where Lewis and his mother are stranded by car trouble. His budding friendship with the ninety-three-year-old black man is his only reprieve from the mysteries that haunt him. Despite his prickly personality and the considerable burden of his own personal tragedies, Stroud becomes the boy's best hope for a father figure as he teaches Lewis the secrets of baseball and the secrets of life.
Sabbath Creek is more than a coming-of-age novel. And while Mitcham provides a nuanced look at the relationship between a white adolescent boy and a black old-timer, his second novel transcends the tired theme of race relations in the South. This compassionate, smart, powerful work of fiction touches the pulse of the human spirit. It travels from the ruined landscape of south Georgia and takes us all the way through the ruined landscape of a broken heart.
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Reviews
"Baseball fan that I am, I am fearful that many reviewers and potential readers will regard Sabbath Creek as one of those baseball novels, but it is no more a baseball novel than Malamud's The Natural. Or, for that matter, it is no more about baseball than The Old Man and the Sea is about fishing. Sabbath Creek is, like these two masterworks, nothing shy of an elegant work of fiction, and like all
Reginald McKnight, author of He Sleeps: A Novel
"Lechner nails how conflicted racial and regional identity can be, especially in the 1970s when it was not altogether clear exactly what such interrelated identities would mean once the cultural and political ground of Jim Crow gave way. In capturing the historical contingency and inconsistency of the white Souths imagined, Lechner's book is a model of scholarly interpretation and cultural analysi
Smoky Mountain News
"At fourteen, Lewis is growing into his full life while Stroud, ninety-three, is nearing the end of his, but their radiant friendship overrides age and race. This fine novel is another heart-warmer like The Sweet Everlasting, and its understated prose is lit from within by Mitcham's respect for all the ways human love manifests itself between unlikely people, and then transforms them."
Doris Betts, author of Souls Raised from the Dead