Last night, I got in bed and started reading gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson. I didn’t put it down until I’d finished it about 1:30 this morning. I have two regrets. First, that I had this in my TBR pile and took a couple months to get to it. Second, that the author was right here in town at my Books-A-Million in June for a booksigning, and I didn’t go. I didn’t buy the book until after she’d been here.

I’d thought about going, but I didn’t. To be sort of fair to myself, I didn’t really start taking myself out of the house for more than work and grocery shopping until late July, so I think I had some of the hermitishness going at the time. Two things affected my decision to get out more. My power supply on my primary computer died, and I wound up spending a lot of my post-op recovery time sitting at my local Panera drinking coffee and using their free WiFi on my laptop. The other thing came about when some co-workers invited me to participate in their Tuesday night poker game. I needed a way to get out and socialize, and Tuesday night poker (2.5 hours, and we play for fun) has done the trick.

But I digress. gods in Alabama is told in first person, and the repetition you’ll notice serves a critical purpose. Family relationships are hard. This story illustrates, through a number of inconsistencies the main character doesn’t notice, that family relationships endure, even when we say they haven’t. She does a fine job of illustrating how someone will “fill in the blanks” and reach erroneous conclusions based upon various things happening. Sometimes this story crept uncomfortably close to home. But the ending, has some surprises that wrap things into a neat package. I can’t call it a light read, but it has light moments that balance the dark subject matter — kind of like RealLife.