Strange death makes waves in small town

A stormy Christmas Eve in Florida, the year 1965. A stunningly handsome young man, dressed to the nines in a mohair jacket, a cashmere coat and silver cuff links, wanders into the hick town of Citrus just as two major storms collide, sending pieces of the town’s manger scene flying. “Three wise men who had been bivouacking on the courthouse lawn were kicked out of town; a bevy of shepherds and sheep were sent packing,” writes Scott M. Morris in “Waiting for April,” his Southern drawl of a novel. “Even Baby Jesus went MIA.”

This foreboding scene, in which the polished, upper-crust Sanders Royce Collier strolls into the blue-collar town, forever to change it, becomes the touchstone for the novel, the foundation on which the plot will be built. Sanders’ advent alters the trajectory, for good or for ill, of the lives of those who live there, including June, the young woman who will become Sanders’ wife; Roy, the soon-to-be conceived child of that union and the novel’s narrator; April, June’s fetching teenage sister toward whom Sanders will develop burning embers of lust; and Leonard, the washed-out football hero who harbors a grudge against the outsider.

It wasn’t so much that moment when the townspeople first saw Sanders Royce Collier that has stuck in their memories, Roy is later told, but the final moment before they saw him. “When he might have turned away or wandered down a side street.... There were so many things we could have done with our lives. So many possibilities. And then it was too late. Your father had arrived.”

In no time, June gives birth to Roy, April marries sad-sack Leonard, and Sanders is killed -- shot in what is referred to as a mysterious hunting accident -- leaving his life a blank slate to be written on by the people of Citrus.

Roy unfolds his father’s story over the course of his growing up, untangling the web of well-intentioned lies and misrepresentations, while attempting to balance the expectations that have found their way onto his young shoulders as the result of his supposedly grand patrimony. His mother wants him to become the kind of Southern gentleman his father had been, even though the precise details of the Collier legacy remain unclear. “Be the kind of man that would only be elected president if there were a national crisis,” June admonishes. Yet Roy wants to be his own person. He takes up football training with Leonard because “I couldn’t for the life of me picture my father running intervals or doing one-arm curls or hitting and spinning with a red blocking dummy,” Roy explains. “Consequently, I did such things relentlessly.”

Roy’s growing up is further frustrated by his overwhelming attraction to his gorgeous Aunt April, an obsession that echoes his father’s rumored ardor. Sanders’ infatuation with April, Roy intuits, played a part in his death, though Roy can’t figure out the details. For all his efforts to be different from his father, he worries that he can’t escape his father’s larger-than-life shadow.

Like the two storm fronts that collided that fateful Christmas Eve, opposing forces slam together in Roy, creating the squalls of turbulence that drive the novel. On the one side, Roy is enveloped by the small-town coziness of Citrus and the wealth of family love. On the other, his fate seems inscribed by his genetic code, like the cold eyes he’s had the misfortune to inherit along with a dubious heritage.

Author Morris (“The Total View of Taftly”) is an expert at plotting, pulling readers into the labyrinth of the story with his notably eloquent Southern-flavored narration. True: His high-manner style of storytelling tends toward over-the-top prose. And the book’s ending is tied together far too neatly. Yet these elements, rather than waking the reader from the fictive dream, serve to reinforce this highly stylized tale, supporting Morris’ impressive yarn-spinning and easy humor.

“Waiting for April” is a contagious novel, drawing readers into the mystery of Sanders’ background as it plays out in the lives of all in Citrus.

Unlike June, April and Leonard, who are perpetually stuck in the aftermath of that mythic Christmas Eve arrival, Roy may become the one character to “survive beautifully” the details of his own history. Buoyed by the town from which he hails, he may yet transcend the family stories that have hitherto defined him.

*

Waiting for April

Scott M. Morris

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill: 340 pp., $24.95