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In Linda Bloodsworth Thomason’s first novel, Liberating Paris, Thomason plays on her strength of character development to create a rich and lively story full of wit and wisdom in a sleepy Arkansas town.

Liberating Paris chronicles the life-altering year for one group of old friends in Paris, Arkansas.  Woodrow MacKelmore, better known as Wood, is at the center of this group. He comes from a well-respected family, and carries on the family’s good name first as a star football player, then later as the town’s favorite physician. But with the emotional pain of his father’s death, he begins to ask himself a lot of questions, and begins making a lot of careless decisions.

Milan MacKelmore, Wood’s wife, comes from a very different background, from poverty and a drunken useless father who kills himself right in front of her when she is still a teen.   Then there’s Earl Brundidge Jr., a single dad with two young girls. He owns the local liquor store and in a crusade to change the way the rest of America views people from Arkansas he meets an independent but sweet New Yorker named Charlotte.  He even talks her into visiting Paris. Other outrageous characters that round out the bunch include: Mavis Pinkerton, Milan’s oldest, dearest friend, who owns her own bakery and makes the best pastries in town; Carl Jeter, who became a quadriplegic at seventeen during a highschool football game and took to writing beautiful poetry; and finally, Duff, Wood’s high school sweetheart, now an IHOP waitress, and a troublemaker. She hasn’t been a part of the group in Paris for twenty years, but when her son goes off to college and falls in love with Wood and Milan’s daughter, history rises up and knocks everyone off balance.

Thomason also takes aim at Wal-Mart and its destruction of small town main streets by injecting the plot of “Fed-Mart” in and out of the main story.  Had the “Fed-Mart” storyline been more carefully weaved into the text of the ongoing lives, it would have made for a stronger message. Instead, the political agenda often overpowered the story, interrupting the flow and repeating a message already stated in a slightly different way.  Ironically, the characters are so well-developed and the imagery of downtown is so alive and rich, that the sad truth about downtowns and the reasons for their demise would likely have come through without ever mentioning “Fed-Mart”.

I’d recommend this book for its hilarity, refreshing vibrancy and rich, poignancy, and colorful characters.  I’ve read some reviews that criticized Thomason’s characters as being “unbelievable,” but as someone born and raised in a small town in southeast Missouri, I found them quite believable, even reminiscent of people I knew growing up. In Liberating Paris, Thomason’s genius for telling stories is in full force.

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Liberating Paris

Read our bio of Linda Bloodworth Thomason.