Lee Smith’s newest book shows the ultimate May-December friendship | DON NOBLE
When I hear there is another book by Lee Smith, it brightens my day. There are only a handful of authors who elicit that response.
Her last novel was three years ago — too long.
In my opinion, some writers write too fast. Some, I wish would cease altogether, but that is another story.
This new novel is set, as was the sad ending of the memoir “Dimestore,” and the 2020 novel “Blue Marlin,” in Key West, a locale that, after many years of teaching at the Key West Writers Conference, has become almost as dear to Smith as Grundy, Virginia, or Hillsborough, North Carolina.
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“Silver Alert” is, mostly, a two-person novel. In a sensible world, it would quickly be made into a fairly inexpensive and wonderfully funny movie.
Herb Atlas is an older man, 83, with grown children, stepchildren, son-in-law, grandchildren, all of it, what Zorba would call “the Full Catastrophe” — a new kind of character for Smith.
He is a Yankee, a Jew, and very rich. Herb’s first wife died. Other adventures ended in divorce.
Now Herb is happily married for 12 years, in a home they love, to the much-younger Susan Summerville, who ran an art gallery. Nobody approved.
His daughter Marcie had said, “She just wants your money.”
His daughter Ashley said it wasn’t fair to Susan: she would be burdened by caring for him in his old age.
Now she is 70 and his beautiful, stylish, humorous, charming wife has suddenly, tragically come down with severe early onset dementia: she is mute, or angry, withdrawn, vacant and Herb is caring for her.
Life, the reader realizes, is madly unpredictable. Herb, never religious anyway, feels there is no God and if there is, he is a jerk.
Into this household comes Dee Dee, an aesthetician, that is she does pedicures. Raised in a mountain holler, she has, at only about 19, already had a grotesque life of neglect, poverty, and abuse. She has been a drug addict and a prostitute, but she has retained a beautiful soul, with extraordinary compassion, and is miraculously good for Susan.
She soothes Susan, sings to her, helps her paint on an easel. Dee Dee turns out to be a kind of Alzheimer’s whisperer.
(This character, minus the horrible experiences of her youth, will be familiar to Smith readers from way back to "The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed," and especially to Jennifer of "Oral History." She is pretty, curious, enthusiastic, bent on self-improvement .)
This, to Herb, is nothing less than miraculous. He is deeply grateful and harbors no sexual desires, only gratitude. But then his family, en masse, led by a hopelessly pompous professor son-in-law, Dr. Abe Beerman, “guru to the geezers,” a pretentious academic in chinos and sandals, arrives for an “intervention.”
They all know best what is right for Susan and Herb. This scene, with the earnest and well-meaning, self-righteous bullies is ready for the stage. Readers will find themselves casting it.
Susan must be put in an institution, Herb must go to a nursing home. Dee Dee, some of whose past becomes known, is to be rejected and ejected.
Powerless to resist the combined forces of his family, Herb and Dee Dee start out just going for a ride but find themselves fleeing up Route 1 in his Porsche. Looking up, Herb notices that his family has issued a “silver alert,” the notice for possibly abducted oldsters. They drive on, for one last joyous road trip, trying to get to Orlando, where Dee Dee has never been, to the Magic Kingdom.
Don Noble’s newest book is Alabama Noir, a collection of original stories by Winston Groom, Ace Atkins, Carolyn Haines, Brad Watson, and eleven other Alabama authors.
“Silver Alert”
Author: Lee Smith
Publisher: Algonquin Books, Hachette
Pages: 224
Price: $27 (Hardcover)
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: New book shows the ultimate May-December friendship | DON NOBLE
