The Birds of Opulence
Madness and memories, whether good or bad, are handed down through families like heirlooms. For the women of Opulence, Kentucky, life is no different. This rural black township is small enough that everyone knows everyone else, and few secrets are kept for long. Even the most deeply hidden scandals reverberate through generations. In 1962 Mama Minnie Goode takes her granddaughter Lucy to a squash patch to give birth to Yolanda. Why? Mama Minnie was born in the same squash patch, but that is not the only reason.
Women of the Goode family – Mama Minnie, Tookie, Lucy, and Yolanda – witness their mothers’ struggles with men and children, postpartum depression and shame, and they hope desperately to escape the same woes. Their neighbor, the widow Francine Clark, has her own secret to keep after she becomes pregnant by rape. She remembers how people had talked about her mother after she went mad, so Francine keeps the attack to herself. Another secret, destined to be borne through life like a distasteful aura by Francine and her wayward daughter, Mona.
Crystal Wilkinson’s multigenerational novel, The Birds of Opulence, is an incandescent visit with four generations of Goode women. Birds, all: they are alert and listening, caring or unheeding, and some of them more than a little wild. The award-winning Ms. Wilkinson will draw you into her compulsively readable story with deceptively simple dialogue and vivid imagery, and the complex, unforgettable Goode women will captivate you. Highly recommended for lovers of entwined family stories, and for everyone else as well.
