Interviews

Listen to an interview with Leslie Walker Williams on Georgia Public Radio's Cover to Cover program, April 19, 2009. Go to the Cover to Cover website, or listen here.

Read "Leslie Walker Williams' debut novel mines the South's rich storytelling vein" by John Marshall at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer online. Or download the PDF of the article.

Reviews

"Mariner charts dark secrets" By Jillian Hull
The Georgia Straight, Volume 43, Number 2145, January 29- February 5,
2009, Vancouver B.C.

Some books are about secrets kept. Some books are about secrets revealed. But in The Prudent Mariner, a superb first novel by American writer Leslie Walker Williams (now living in Vancouver), the most interesting thing about secrets is how and why we keep them.

Set on the coast of Georgia in the 1960s, the novel unfolds primarily from the perspective of a nine-year-old girl, Riddley Cross—a solver of puzzles and seeker of truth—who inherits a postcard collection from her grandfather containing a horrifying picture of a pretty young white girl against the backdrop of a lynching. Riddley doesn’t know that the girl is her grandmother, Adele, in 1913, nor is she aware of the role Adele played in this event.

Riddley’s urge to know both the identity of the girl and why her family has this postcard propels the narrative and uncovers the real secret at the core of this novel: how a family, a community, and a culture can bury brutal truths under layers of manners and civility. Until Riddley tries to solve the mystery of the postcard, the lynching “will seldom be mentioned, and then only indirectly, and by accident, for this is a family story never told, much less passed down or elaborated on years later.”

The Prudent Mariner will no doubt be compared to To Kill a Mockingbird, as Williams clearly intends. There is the similarity in the names Riddley and Radley (as in Boo), and both stories share, among other things, the fabrication of an illicit sexual relationship between a black man and a white woman, and a scary neighbourhood recluse who turns out to be more decent than the community at large, perhaps by virtue of being marginalized by it.

But Harper Lee’s classic ends with a lie, or at the very least with complicity in sweeping things under the carpet, whereas in The Prudent Mariner true redemption can only happen by acknowledging all that is submerged in our histories. For Riddley, the past is like lagan, a maritime term meaning “goods sunk on purpose so they could eventually be hauled back up”. And hauling the past up to the surface is precisely what this book is about.

Review: The Prudent Mariner on bookchatterandotherstuff.blogspot.com

"I often ask myself what makes a book a classic and I would have to say it's a mix of strong characters, a well-told story and one that can survive the trends. To me, this book falls into this category..."

Read full review here, or download a PDF of the review.

Advance Praise for The Prudent Mariner

"In Leslie Walker Williams' skillful hands, the past really isn't even past yet; it's always with her characters, shaping every aspect of their lives. Few writers combine Williams' feel for place with her grasp of history's personal reverberations."

—Andrea Barrett, National Book Award winner, author of Ship Fever

"The land, the heat, the South's societal complexities (and perplexitites) are all here, shadowed by an only half-hidden legacy of racism and violence. At the center of the story is the irrepressible, resourceful Riddley, who seeks to unriddle the past. A cache of old photographs sends her on an intriguing journey as she struggles to acknowledge and move beyond an awful history. Utterly involving, wise and perceptive, this is a novel to remember. If you liked To Kill a Mockingbird, you will love The Prudent Mariner."

—Kelly Cherry, judge of the Peter Taylor Prize, 2007

"In The Prudent Mariner, Williams has created a richly inhabited novel with a strong sense of both place and history. Her clear-eyed heroine Riddley deftly navigates the tricky waters of racism, and in doing so gradually comes to understand both her own visions and the complex society she inhabits. A sparkling debut."

—Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street