Discordia in Florida
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The protagonist, Lolly Johansen, becomes the hub that links three other colorful characters. Through those connections, newfound insight creates fairly believable transformations. Lolly is a poet who teaches poetry workshops at a women’s prison just outside of Tallahassee. She seems to be without flaw unless we count her health, which starts deteriorating as soon as the story gets going. A survivor of bone cancer that cost her one leg at the age of fourteen, she now finds a lump on her breast, has a biopsy, and learns that she has breast cancer. Following a poetry workshop, she decides to teach another class at the prison. She chooses the medium of drama, so she can get her estranged sister involved, in the hope that working together will rebuild their relationship. Jen, Lolly’s sister, is an out-of-work actress and an adjunct drama teacher at the University of Florida who’s facing the prospect of a summer with no income. Lolly knows this and offers her $2,000—the entire amount of her grant—to work with her at the prison.

If Lolly is without flaws, Jen has enough for both of them. Self-centered and drinking alcoholically, her life is in pretty bad shape. In the past, she’s made some “porn films” and worries that her secret could be revealed. She feels forced to accept Lolly’s offer, after which she immediately gets drunk. That night she gets pulled over by a policeman who, instead of taking her license (which she’s just gotten back after a previous DUI), takes her home with him. Out of this encounter, a rocky relationship develops, but Jen doesn’t make it easy for Zach. One night after she’s taken Lolly home from the hospital following a mastectomy, she irresponsibly leaves her sister alone and goes to a bar to numb her feelings with alcohol. Zach comes in and tries to talk to her, and she tells him to get lost. When Jen leaves the bar, she can’t find her keys. Zach has taken them and left money with the bartender for a cab to take her home. She goes home but doesn’t speak to Zach again for a long time.

Other women that populate this novel are the female prisoners, each having her own history, each wrestling with her own demons. Sonia comes from a family of gypsies and traveling con artists. Our introduction to her is in the prison bathroom, where she’s on the floor being beaten by another inmate for having stolen a pack of cigarettes. Much later, Sonia enlists the help of Jen when she learns that her brother has taken her infant son with the intent of selling him. Sonia also provides the only lesbian content in the form of a brief same-sex attraction and a single stolen kiss.

Nicole, the author of that seemingly innocuous first sentence, had a good upbringing and received a college education, but none of that helped her when she fell in love. Junebug, her boyfriend, asked her to take a drug rap for him because she had a clean record and neither of them thought she’d end up in prison. Nicole muses: “I was the first one in my family to go to college. Now, I’m the first one to wind up in prison.” Junebug has a “presence,” she insists: “It was like he was wearing a magnet so strong that the snaps on my jeans were about to drag me over to him.” We watch these two women develop a new understanding of their past as they create autobiographical sketches to perform under the direction of Jen and Lolly. Toward the novel’s end, as the media and politicians descend on Tallahassee, as Lolly’s death looms before us and the prison drama class does its final performance, we see evidence of the powerful bond between these women and we see how each life is changed by this relationship.

This rich and well-written novel leaves us considering the universal themes of love and betrayal, life and death, faith and godlessness. We know from the outset that Lolly will leave and Nicole will write about it, and we know how the election turmoil in Florida will be resolved, but MacEnulty reels us into that first vignette by presenting troubled, passionate characters who are “grieving for some lost part of themselves.” These characters’ experience will resonate with those of every woman, and readers will doubtless think about them long after closing this book.
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Martha Miller, whose most recent novel is Tales from the Levee, is a frequent contributor to this journal.