3 really good new novels with unusual anti-heroes

Talk about an anti-hero. From an overweight shut-in to Richard Nixon, these three new novels feature unlikely protagonists.

3. 'The Lost Saints of Tennessee,' by Amy Franklin-Willis

Zeke Cooper’s life hasn’t turned out quite like how his ambitious mother had planned. Undone by twin disasters – divorce from his childhood sweetheart and the drowning death of his twin, Carter – the 42-year-old can’t see a future any more.

The big question, as he puts it, is: “[H]ow did the smart boy with a full scholarship to the University of Virginia end up living in a converted shed in his mother's backyard and working on the line at the Dover elevator plant?”

The Lost Saints of Tennessee, told mostly from Zeke’s viewpoint, with a few salient facts thrown in by his estranged mother, Lillian, looks at the Cooper family history from the 1940s to the 1980s and how things went so very wrong.

When the novel has opened, Zeke’s had enough: “My daily choices have evolved from whether to have chili or a Swanson's Hungry Man dinner to kicking around suicide methods.”

He can’t leave his brother’s elderly dog, Tucker, behind, so the two set out to Pigeon Forge, where Zeke’s suicide plan doesn’t quite come off as expected. From there, Zeke and Tucker head back to a relative’s farm in Virginia – the last place he can remember feeling hope.

“The Lost Saints” is a “Southern novel,” in terms of being filled with RC Cola, Moon pies, McDonald's drive-through, hummingbird cake, and the Piggly Wiggly. But any bright kid making it to middle age can easily relate to battered Zeke and his bafflement about what he’s supposed to do now.

Franklin-Willis tries too hard to create a happy ending for her worn-out hero, but she excels at making readers care about her characters, especially the ones who have made the biggest mistakes. And after all, it would be downright curmudgeonly to begrudge Zeke a little happiness.

3 of 3

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.