BackSeat Saints

By Joshilyn Jackson
Read by the author

        Rosemary (Ro) married into one of the county’s most powerful families. Her husband, Tom, is attractive and runs to keep fit. He also gets a regular work out beating Ro. One day after taking her neighbor Mrs Fancy to the airport Rose runs into a gypsy with tarot cards. It takes running across the country with her father’s gun in tow and risking the lives of her loved ones for Rosemary to realize what that one card meant.

Rose sees herself as two different people Rosemary Lolly the girl deserted by her mother and beaten by her drunken father. The girl who deserved to be beat by her husband; who wonders why her husband can’t hit Ro Grandy hard enough to reach through to the Rosemary Lolly hiding inside. Then there is Ro Grandy “righteous in her bruises; Ro who needs to save Tom from her – his wife.”

Considering the gypsy’s words gospel Ro Grandy makes her move, but a fatal mistake has her running, looking to her past, her drunken father and the mother who ran away from home. Like any abuse story one may judge without realizing and think there has to be another way.

Written in first person, the main character comments on the conclusion then goes back to the beginning; back to Rosemary and Tom meeting, falling in love, falling into abuse, etc. In the end the author offers some interesting twists which enlighten us even more about the characters and their choices. In reading Jackson’s previous novels I’ve discovered the author can take a sensitive subject -- such as abuse – develop some multi-layered characters and events to create a haunting storyline.

Backseat Saints is the type of story you can’t put down until you know the characters are okay. Amazingly the narrator’s Southern accent and Rosemary’s matter-of-fact tone presents a story of abuse in a tolerable way. She also brings out Rosemary Lolly/Grandy’s innocence.

Included at the very end is an excerpt from Jackson’s Gods in Alabama.