James Wilcox

Universally and repeatedly praised ever since it first appeared in 1983, Modern Baptists is the book that launched novelist James Wilcox's career and debuted the endearingly daft community of Tula Springs, Louisiana. It's the tale of Bobby Pickens, assistant manager of Sonny Boy Bargain Store, who gains a new lease on life, though he almost comes to regret it. Bobby's handsome half brother F.X. -- ex-con, ex-actor, and ex-husband three times over -- moves in, and things go awry all over town. Mistaken identities; entangled romances with Burma, Toinette, and Donna Lee; assault and battery; charges of degeneracy; a nervous breakdown -- it all comes to a head at a Christmas Eve party in a cabin on a poisoned swamp. This is sly, madcap romp that offers readers the gift of abundant laughter. Modern Baptists was included in Harold Bloom's The Western Canon, in GQ magazine's forty-fifth anniversary issue as one of the best works of fiction in the past forty-five years, and among Toni Morrison's "favorite works by unsung writers" in U.S. News and World Report.

A Novel

Modern Baptists

Sort of Rich

Een weinig geslaagde celliste van middelbare leeftijd in een provinciestadje in het Zuiden van de Verenigde Staten probeert op allerlei manieren wat te verdienen. Haar leven wordt mede bepaald door haar orthodox katholieke overtuiging.

North Gladiola

Ethyl Mae Coco's rambling Victorian home on North Gladiola -- the Main Street of Tula Springs, Louisiana -- is the only residence left at the business end of town, but it's a hotbed for chaotic comedy. Mrs. Coco, aged fifty-seven and feeling somewhat left behind herself, directs her considerable energy into keeping those around her in line -- her remote, obsessively bargain-hunting husband; members of the Pro Arts Quartet chamber music group, which Ethyl Mae aspires to turn into an accomplished cultural jewel; her six unruly grown children, none of whom keeps the Catholic faith to their staunch convert mother's satisfaction; and the other assorted, eccentric, and endearing people of Tula Springs. Nothing is simple -- or quite as gossip portrays it -- in Tula Springs, but after all upheavals and sunders pass, this wired family and community remain strongly connected.

Narrates the often comical events in Tula Springs surrounding the suspicious death of a male nurse caring for Uncle L.D., a bedridden octogenarian

Miss Undine's Living Room

When Emily and Clara, two young women from Tula Springs, Louisiana, arrive in New York City, they carry with them all the youthful expectancy of a bright future filled with passion and accomplishment. As the years pass and Emily and Clara follow different paths, each discovers in her own way that growing older involves concessions -- and that concessions in love can be the costliest of all.

James Wilcox

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