20 May 2019 THE TRUE HISTORY OF LYNDIE B. HAWKINS by Gail Shepherd, Penguin Random House/Kathy Dawson Books, March 2019, 304p., ISBN: 978-0-525-42845-9

“Anger is a response that you learned early in life to help you cope with pain.”

“The only thing true and indisputable when you feel angry is that you are in pain and trying to do something about it.”

“Expressing anger temporarily helps you overcome feelings of helplessness and lack of control. But it disrupts relationships and makes you feel even more helpless and out-of-control--a vicious cycle.”

“There are many ways to discharge high levels of stress besides anger. Some of them are healthy, some are destructive.”

-- from WHEN ANGER HURTS: QUIETING THE STORM WITHIN by Matthew McKay, Ph.D., et al. (2003)

“We had no cameras

To shoot the landscape

We passed the hash pipe

And played our Doors tapes

And it was dark

So dark at night

And we held onto each other

Like brother to brother

We promised our mothers we’d write

And we would all go down together”

-- Billy Joel, “Goodnight Saigon” (1982)

“Mean Miss Smitty marches over holding a stack of math tests, reeking of mimeograph ink. She’s glaring at me. Obviously. I’m going to have to really buckle down if I want Miss Smitty to forgive my truancy.

‘Lyndon. The pastor will see you. He’s on the phone now with your grandmother.’ She pauses to let the horror of this sink in. ‘You can go in when he’s finished. D.B, we need to get you a Covenant Academy uniform. We have strict regulations. About hair too.’ She scrutinizes D.B. with no evidence of any goodwill. ‘The earring will have to go,’ she says. ‘You might as well take it off now. And denim is a forbidden fabric.’ She stalks off and rummages around in her desk.’

‘A forbidden fabric,’ D.B. chortles. ‘I like the whole notion of that.’ He tosses a red jujube into the air and catches it in his mouth.

‘So what’s D.B. stand for?’

‘Damned Brilliant.’ He fiddles with his earring, takes it off, drops it in his jacket pocket.

‘Not much evidence of that yet,’ I say. ‘More like, Dingle Berry?’

‘Very funny.’

‘What’s it stand for, then?’

‘Disturbed Boy.’

‘Oh. Well. I was thinking, you seem sort of well adjusted. Considering.’

‘It’s a ruse,’ he says, shrugging. He peels off his blue-jean jacket and folds it neatly over the back of his chair. He’s wearing a T-shirt printed with the words: Frankie Says Relax.

D.B. darts a glance around the office and lowers his voice. ‘So what do I need to know about Covenant Academy? Other than what fabrics are forbidden.’

‘What, Dawn didn’t fill you in?’

‘Dawn loves school. I need the quick and dirty.’”

In the fall of 1985, in Love’s Forge, Tennessee, seventh-grade history buff Lyndie B. Hawkins is spinning out of control. Her Vietnam vet father has lost his job and his behavior is becoming more and more erratic and dangerous. Her former war-protesting mother has been locking herself in her room, complaining of headaches. Her parents are forced to sell their house and the three of them move in with Lyndie’s paternal grandparents. As her father reminds her, Lyndie and her grandmother, Lady, have butted heads “from the first time she held you, and you puked on her new dress.”

On the positive side, Lyndie will be living close to her longtime best friend Dawn Spurlock. But she and Dawn haven’t been close lately, and now Dawn’s family is fostering a juvenile delinquent for the school year.

It turns out that that juvenile delinquent, D.B., is in desperate straits. He’d accidentally lit his former foster family’s house on fire and he’s since been incarcerated in Pure Visions Reform Academy, a juvenile reform facility that has repeatedly been under investigation because of teens dying there. He is attempting to be a perfect student and a perfect guest so that he can somehow manage to avoid returning to the dangerous reform school.

Both Lyndie and D.B. are under incredible levels of stress. Paired up in their Advanced English class for a term project, they will learn secrets about one another that can never be shared in their final presentations. Meanwhile, Lyndie and Lady go at it on a daily basis, as Lyndie’s father descends into a hell of alcohol and what we today refer to as post traumatic stress disorder. In response to being taunted, Lyndie gets angry enough to break a classmate’s nose.

In a preface that makes so much sense by time you’ve reached the end of the book, Lyndie muses about “honorable lying.” What is one to do when torn between loyalty to family and facing up to ugly truths that could tear your family to shreds?

Mix together a damaged vet, a hound dog, an injured fawn, some shoofly pie, an elderly lawyer, a couple of cops, a champion kickboxer, a good-hearted delinquent, a hot-headed young woman, and a couple of jaw-dropping surprises, and you have one of those books that will keep you up way, way past your bedtime, dying to know how it is all going to turn out.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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