Read of the Month: “Prodigal” by Phyllis Gobbell

Fireworks, fireflies, and gunfire light up Phyllis Gobbell’s exquisite, poignant novel Prodigal (Histria Fiction 2024). This modern retelling of the prodigal son is, above all, a story of love and forgiveness in a Southern family.

A Baptist preacher’s son, nineteen-year-old Connor Burdette flees from his hometown of Montpier, Tennessee, after a boy he is with shoots a convenience store clerk. The unplanned shooting turns Connor into an accomplice. But that isn’t all Connor is running from. He carries a huge secret and a broken heart out of town. He has betrayed his older brother Russ in ways Russ never suspects. The Burdettes don’t know where Connor is or even if he is still alive.

Ten years after Connor fled, he returns when his grandmother, Lady Burdette, dies. After his long absence, his family is shocked when he suddenly shows up in Montpier, the little God-fearing, love-your-neighbor town “set like a jewel in the rolling Tennessee hills.” While his family is happy to see him again, his brother Russ is also angry, wondering how Connor could have left without a word to them all those years. And that anger is nothing compared to the outrage and disbelief Russ feels when Lady Burdette’s new will is read. Why would Lady leave her vast fortune to Connor, the grandson who had disappeared a decade before? It was Russ who stayed and helped Lady keep her old house functioning these years. And isn’t it suspicious that Lady made this new will a week before she died—and then Connor shows up? Did he have something to do with her death? The will only serves to further strain family relationships and sow mistrust.

Connor’s big sister Ivy is sure that Connor, the little boy who protected fireflies and was distressed if they died, never willingly harmed anyone. Yet every time Connor is gone for a few hours, the family wonders if he has disappeared again. Has the prodigal returned for good? Or will he leave again? Is he strong enough to withstand the disapproval and suspicion of the townspeople? Connor himself isn’t sure.

Using multiple viewpoints, Phyllis Gobbell slowly reveals all the secrets and uncovers hidden motives. Connor discovers he is far stronger than he realizes. It requires tremendous strength of character to make the sacrifices demanded by love, demanded by his need for redemption.

Prodigal is a beautifully written novel with powerful underlying message that guns in the wrong hands bring nothing but pain and trouble. The lives of so many of Gobbell’s characters are upended by bullets, not only the lives of those injured, but also by everyone who loves the shooter and the person shot.

Phyllis Gobbell

Phyllis Gobbell’s writing career spans four decades and includes fiction and nonfiction, with a total of seven books and over thirty stories and articles. Two true-crime books, An Unfinished Canvas and A Season of Darkness, recount high-profile, cold-case murders in Nashville. She also wrote the Jordan Mayfair Mystery Series, beginning with Pursuit in Provence, followed by Secrets and Shamrocks and Treachery in Tuscany, which won Killer Nashville’s Silver Falchion Award for Best Cozy Mystery. She received the Tennessee Arts Commission’s Individual Artist Award in Fiction. An active participant in the writing community, she helped organize the Tennessee Writers Alliance in 1990. She served on its Board of Directors for ten years, including two terms as president and one as chair of the Board. She was also a founding member of the Nashville Writers Alliance that still meets every Tuesday night. She earned her B.S. in Education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and received her M.A. in English from Austin Peay State University.

 

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