Novel explores dangerous mix of race, sex and murder in a small town | DON NOBLE

De’Shawn Winslow had a great success with his debut novel, “In West Mills.”

That book won the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction and, in a more specialized vein, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Prize and the Publishing Triangle awards. These latter two prizes are given to celebrate the very best in LGBTQ literature: fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

The superb Irish writer Colm Toibin has won a Lambda for “The Master,” a fictionalized life of Henry James.

“In West Mills” was praised for its thoroughly convincing creation of a really small North Carolina town, located in the northeast section of the state, near the Virginia border, many commuting to work in Virginia Beach or Newport News. The town has a canal down the center that also serves as the "color line." The west side of West Mills is the Black side.

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There is little to do in West Mills, and little going on, but, in “Decent People,” set in 1976, that changes when three siblings, African-Americans, are killed in their home one night.

Marian, Marva and Lazarus Harmon are discovered shot to death, Lazarus having been shot the most; perhaps he was the primary target.

At the crime scene, the local sheriff finds some marijuana and various pills.

Marian was in fact an M.D., the town’s only Black physician. These Harmons were presumably the title's "decent people."

Were they killed by someone seeking drugs? If so, why were there drugs left behind? That would be absurd. Was Marian making extra cash writing scrip for addicts? Was this a drug deal, of some kind, gone bad?

In any case, the white sheriff doesn’t care very much.

But Josephine Wright cares intensely. Jo has retired from her job in New York City, returned to West Mills after 48 years, and reunited with an old flame, Olympus Seymore, called Lymp. Lymp is a half-brother of the three murder victims and is suspected of their killing.

He is not arrested — the sheriff can’t be bothered — but Jo is furious that gossip focuses on Lymp, mainly because he had quarreled with his half-siblings.

The novel is, for a while, a whodunnit, when she sets out to find the killer and clear Lymp’s name. She learns soon that many townspeople have their secrets, several had recently quarreled with Marian, and the town is full of angry people.

There is no privacy and no secrets. Many disputes are conducted in public, in church and stores, with others listening. Gossip conveys the news to anyone absent.

As the story progresses, Winslow himself, the novelist, seems to lose lost interest in the murders. What Josephine uncovers is truly widespread sexual activity in West Mills, starting with premarital: many a bride is already pregnant. Extramarital affairs are so common that one wife muses after a tiff with her husband, "Some men in West Mills would have given their wives the silent treatment, used the public argument ... as an excuse to go spend a few nights (or weeks) with their girlfriend."

Although publicly frowned upon by everyone, there is more interracial sex than one would imagine.

But, in the black community, it is homosexuality that is the real taboo and dangerous.

Effeminate boys are called sissies, ostracized and bullied. Parents feel their sons need to be cured. One young mother, Eunice, takes her son LaRoy to Dr. Marian for “treatment” which, we learn, is to have two bigger boys literally BEAT the gay out of him.

Josephine’s gay brother, Herschel, has remained in the relative safety of New York. He’s not coming back.

The murder is, of course, solved. Only Lymp and Jo care, really, and if West Mills is any kind of accurate description of a real town, don’t go there.

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.

“Decent People: A Novel”

Author: De’Shawn Charles Winslow

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Pages: 260

Price: $28 (Hardcover)

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Novel explores mix of race, sex and murder in a small town | DON NOBLE