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    The Queen of Palmyra: A Novel
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    The Queen of Palmyra: A Novel
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    The Queen of Palmyra: A Novel
    Ebook489 pages8 hours

    The Queen of Palmyra: A Novel

    By Minrose Gwin

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “The most powerful and also the most lyrical novel about race, racism, and denial in the American South since To Kill a Mockingbird.”
    — Lee Smith, author of On Agate Hill

    “Exquisitely beautiful… The novel grips the reader from its first page and relentlessly drives us to its conclusion.”
    — William Ferris, author of Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues

    An atmospheric debut novel about growing up in the changing South in 1960s Mississippi in the tradition of Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees and Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. In the words of Jill McCorkle (Going Away Shoes), “Minrose Gwin is an extremely gifted writer and The Queen of Palmyra is a brilliant and compelling novel.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 27, 2010
    ISBN9780061992537
    Unavailable
    The Queen of Palmyra: A Novel
    Author

    Minrose Gwin

    Minrose Gwin is the author of three novels: The Queen of Palmyra, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award; Promise, finalist for the Willie Morris Award in Southern Literature; and The Accidentals.  In her memoir, Wishing for Snow, she writes about the convergence of poetry and psychosis in her mother’s life. Wearing another hat, she has written four books of literary and cultural criticism and history, most recently Remembering Medgar Evers: Writing the Long Civil Rights Movement, and coedited The Literature of the American South, a Norton anthology. Minrose began her career as a newspaper reporter. Since then, she has taught as a professor at universities across the country, most recently the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Like the characters in Promise, she grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi.      

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    Reviews for The Queen of Palmyra

    3.5/5

    65 ratings11 reviews

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    • 3/5
      To be sure, it has its faults. Gwin uses more similes per chapter than most authors use in an entire book. Certainly Florence seems to be fairly clueless for a child that has grown up in Mississippi and sometimes seems to be older than her years. But the story is wonderful and worth overlooking the flaws.
    • 4/5
      This book was featured in the AJC one Sunday and was compared to the bestseller The Help. Growing up in the south I have always been interested in race relations and especially those involving Black maids and this book portrayed an interesting aspect of that relationship.

      I enjoyed this story and although it sometimes felt like it was dragging at times, overall it was one of those stories that kept you on the edge of your seat and leaves you with more questions than answers ( at least for me it did).

      The Queen of Palmyra tells the story of a 9 year old girl in the hot Mississippi summer of 1963. Things are changing all around and as some of this change starts to appear in Millwood, Mississippi things take a drastic turn. The story highlights all of this from 9 year old Florence's eyes ( with a few flashbacks) and takes an interesting looking at race relations and the relationship between families and the hired help.
    • 4/5
      THE QUEEN OF PALMYRA is a story of troubled times in the deep south, told from the perspective of a child. Set in the summer of 1963, Florence has just returned to her home town of Millville after a year spent on the road, following her father around the country while he tried - and failed - to find a steady job. Her father, Win, has had trouble getting his life in order: he starts menial job after menial job but can't keep any of them for long because of his violent temper. Win's sense of entitlement and short fuse make him fail as a blue-collar worker - but those very same qualities are assets in his night-time persona: Nighthawk for the Ku Klux Klan. Win is a white supremacist, the official "enforcer" for the Klan, and it's his job to keep uppity blacks in place with threats, savage beatings, and cold-blooded murder where necessary.

      Florence is shielded from her father's worst behavior by her mother, Martha. Martha is the daughter of a liberal, well-educated Southern family and she married Win for all the wrong reasons. The two share strong sexual chemistry (Florence recalls hearing her mother refer, angrily, to the lure of Win's "Great Big You Know What"), and Win was born with a birth defect - a club foot - stirring Martha's pity. Pity and sexual chemistry convinced Martha to marry Win when she was just out of high school, against the advice of her family and friends. Martha soon discovers her mistake - she learns about Win's involvement in the Ku Klux Klan, Win is physically abusive, and because of his inability to hold down a job Martha must shoulder the burden of keeping the family financially afloat. She copes with these issues by feeding information about the Klan's activities to members of the black community who can organize defensive measures, by starting a cake-making business, and by drinking to excess.

      By the time that THE QUEEN OF PALMYRA begins, when Florence is nine years old, her parents marriage is in dire straits. Martha's drinking is out of control, and she's unable to perform the basics of mothering: keeping Florence fed, clothed, clean, and protected. Florence sees the way that other parents treat their children, suffocating them with loving attention and treating them like "Precious Cargo", and she sharply feels her own neglect. Her unhappiness shows up in the form of frequent illness, especially a constant, deep tiredness.

      Martha decides that the best thing she can do for Florence is to place her in the care of her old nanny, Zenie. Zenie, a smart, no-nonsense black woman will give Florence some much-needed mothering, and also counteract the poisonous, racist ideas that Win feeds Florence in the form of bedtime stories. Zenie, named for Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, is tough and brusque but she's also a fundamentally good woman in a warm, stable marriage. By spending time at her grandparents' home during the day, where Zenie works as a maid, and at Zenie's home at night, Florence is exposed to happy, stable marriages and forward-thinking ideas about racial equality.

      Several important events take place during the summer of 1963. Zenie's niece Eva Green arrives in town, with a college education and a deep desire to work for racial equality in Millville. She starts selling insurance policies door to door, working for a company that is owned by blacks and treats blacks fairly - but Win has also found work as an insurance salesman, going door to door in the black neighborhoods and letting everyone know that if they don't buy his policies, and keep paying for them, he'll make sure that they get a visit from the Nighthawk and his "headache stick." Eva, by trying to cut into Win's territory, incurs his wrath - and suffers for it. Win tracks her down in broad daylight and beats her unconscious, possibly raping her as well (it's not clear how far his sexual violation of Eva goes). This is the last straw for Martha, who tries to commit suicide and lands herself in a mental institution where she's given electrical shock therapy at Win's insistence. As a consequence, Florence comes face to face with her father's dark side, which she has never seen before.

      With Martha out of the picture, Win expresses his racism to Florence in a way he never could before - using foul language, taking her to Klan meetings and even having a friend sew her up a little Klan costume to wear, but also physically abusing her for minor disobedience. For example, when Martha is in the hospital Florence
      tries to bake the cakes that Martha had committed to make for her business, but she starts a fire in the kitchen instead. As punishment, Win badly burns Florence's arms on a candle flame - to show her just how dangerous fire can be. It also becomes clear that Win's devotion to his daughter is not entirely fatherly - there is a disturbing sexual undertone to his behavior towards Florence which spikes when Martha disappears. Gwin describes Win climbing into bed with his daughter at night, both of them nearly naked in the hot Mississippi summer, while Win tells his daughter fairy tales and rubs her belly. Florence is both comforted and disturbed by his touch, and aware of his occasional erections.

      It's clear from the beginning that Win's failures as a provider for his family drive his enthusiasm for the Klan. So when his family starts to fall apart - when he realizes his wife would rather die than stay with him, when it looks like his daughter looks down on his involvement in the Klan, the one place where he gets the respect he
      thinks he deserves - Win takes it out on the black community as the Nighthawk. Of course, this only makes the situation worse: Florence sees the devastation of the black community from within and what little stability she has in her life crumbles. She's slow to realize the truth, but eventually Florence understands exactly how evil her father is. The realization is devastating, but luckily Florence is able to flee Millville with her grandmother, escaping her father's influence for good. Others aren't so lucky: Eva Green is murdered on the eve of Florence's departure.

      THE QUEEN OF PALMYRA tells a very dark story, but the way it is told keeps the reading experience from becoming too depressing. As a child, Florence was buffered from the whole truth and so the reader, too, sees the adult goings on in the novel only obliquely. There's a lot of day-to-day detail and local color. Florence comments on her own storytelling, observing at one point: "By now I've read enough stories in my life to know I'm not telling this one right. All this business about Daddy's box and Mama's icings and Zenie's green leaf
      curtains and my speckled butterbeans. Too much clutter." The narrator is too modest - Gwin's detours give the story added power, rather than detracting from its impact. But the structure allows the reader to feel along with Florence how painful her memories are, and how hard it is to return to them.

      The writing is very strong, with a distinctive, folksy southern voice ("When you see something you don't believe, something you know can't be true, then forgetting can shove remembering out the door and if remembering ever does return home like that poor long-lost prodigal boy, forgetting wants to kill him." or "Shake Rag people planted themsleves on their front porches, babies blooming like dark red roses from the laps of great-grandmothers, who held them with swollen fingers in a death grip"). The characters are vividly drawn, complex, coming to life over the course of the novel and settling strongly into the imagination - they stick with you after you've finished the book.

      I enjoyed THE QUEEN OF PALMYRA. The setting, characters, and language combine seamlessly into a fully realized novel whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If this story appeals, THE QUEEN OF PALMYRA is definitely worth considering.
    • 1/5
      This is not what I expected, and frankly the story resembles Summer in the South too much. The story is another of those Southern stories with eccentric characters and depressing times. After chapters and pages of this drivel, I gave up.
    • 4/5
      This book was very well written. It is not a light Southern story by any means. It is a story that will put you in a place and time in our countries Civil Rights Movement. While reading this book I truly felt what it must have been like during that time period. I felt compassion for Florence as she narrates her story. She is stuck with a father who is abusive and a racist and a mother who bakes cakes and is an unstable alcoholic. I felt no one really had her best interests at heart until she became attached to Zenie, her grandparents' maid. Knowing the book was set in Mississippi in 1963, I knew the relationship between the two might cause conflict. The town of Millwood is segregated and when Zenie's niece, Eva comes to town, things are shaken up a bit. The story does move a little slow at times but I think it reflects the time and place of where the story takes place. Times were slower then, people weren't in such a hurry. I found the ending a bit rushed but satisfying. I think this book is great for book groups as there is much to discuss.
    • 3/5
      When you think of the civil rights movement, it is more than likely you're firmly planted in the South, correct? It seems as if southern-set fiction generally has one of two (or both) characteristics. Either it is set during the civil rights movement (or in some way connected to it) or it is rife with quirky eccentric characters like the southern gothics populating Flannery O'Connor's works. As much as I say I enjoy Southern fiction, I am getting a little tired of these two inevitabilities. Enter Gwin with The Queen of Palmyra, the novel everyone was raving about and which I was leery of reading, knowing in advance it was another civil rights novel.Narrated by Florence, who was 12 years old during the significant events of one summer in 1960's Mississippi, this novel is actually told through the memories of a much older Florence looking back on her naive and innocent self with knowledge that she never had or never understood at the time. Most of the narration seems as if it is coming from a young girl but the perspective of memory gives the reader tantalizing glimpses into the deep and terrible truths that escape 12-year old Florence.The Forrest family is one shattered by ugliness and illness. When the story opens, Florence's mother, Martha, is the town's cake lady, baking cakes for special occasions and to supplement the family income. She is also an alcoholic. Florence's father, Win, is a burial insurance salesman who has terrorized the black population in town into buying from him. He is also a ranking member of the local Ku Klux Klan, a nasty man who tries hard to instill his own thinking and reverences in his daughter. But Florence spends more time with her educated and more liberal thinking grandparents and with their black maid Zenie, named for Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, than she does with her dysfunctional parents, thereby escaping the full brunt of Win's evil.During the slow, hot summer of the novel, racial tension and violence mount even as Florence practically lives at Zenie's home, unable to understand why she is not easily welcome there, amongst the people so brutalized by her father and his cronies. As her mother's small defiances against her father lead to a family crisis at home, Florence spends more and more time in Shake Rag, the black section of town so she is already installed at Zenie's home most days when Zenie's progressive-thinking niece Eva arrives and brings tensions to a head trying to sell burial insurance policies that would compete with Win Forrest's policies.Telling the story through the eyes of a child but also including fleeting instances of that child's adult perspective allows Gwin to round out Florence's incomplete story and to inform the reader of the importance and scope of events. The method of narration ratchets up the horror of the events because of, rather than in spite of, Florence's uneducated perspective. While this is the case, however, the pace of the narrative is sleepy, dreamy, and slow, lulling the reader into a suspended state. The characters are generally fairly well-rounded although Win and Eva come off as less real and more stereotypical than the others.As lauded as the novel has been, I have to admit that I didn't love it. I felt like it was a bit too derivative to be wholly satisfying. This feeling might be a function of my having read a lot of Southern literature, some of it even quite recently. There were gaps in the narrative that would make sense from 12 year old Florence's perspective but not given the framing technique of an older Florence looking back on that seminal summer. The climax of the story was less shocking than expected and older Florence's final thoughts on the summer, her actions as a result, were like a deflating balloon, leaving the novel to just peter out. Lukewarm, I liked the novel, thinking it competent and fine enough, but many, many folks have called it one of their favorites of the year. Lovers of Southern lit, folks with an interest in the civil rights movement, and fans of the other big southern book making the rounds of bookclubs this year, The Help, will want to form their own opinions of this one.
    • 3/5
      After a year of wandering with her family, Florence Forrest is growing up in segregated Millwood, Mississippi in the early 1960′s. Her father sells burial insurance and her alcoholic mother is the town’s “cake lady”. Florence’s mother comes from an educated, enlightened background and her father is a member of the Klan, so their relationship is troubled.Because of her parents’ problems and the tense atmosphere at home, Florence spends most of her time with her grandmother’s maid, Zenie. Spending so much time at Zenie’s home exposes Florence to the treatment of African American people and she sees racism first hand. She doesn’t understand much of what she sees, so she really doesn’t question it, until years later when she reflects back on her childhood.The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin is exactly the kind of book I love – it’s set in the South and tackles an issue – so I was really excited to read it. I’m sad to say it didn’t live up to my expectations. I’m not sure if that’s a reflection of the book or a reflection of my expectations being set too high.I think the biggest problem I had with this book is that I found the story to be so slow – the pace wasn’t quite fast enough for me. I also wanted a little more background – why did Florence’s parents get married in the first place and why had her family been “on the lam” for a year? I know that some of my questions weren’t answered because the story was told from a child’s perspective, but not having that background took away from the story for me. I also felt a sense of disconnect from Florence – I wanted to get to know her better.I know it sounds like I didn’t enjoy The Queen of Palmyra, but that’s not the case at all, I just didn’t love it like I thought I would. The book is well written and tells a great story, but overall, I found it to be good, but not great. A lot of other readers have loved it, though.
    • 4/5
      From my blog...A tale of strong women during exceedingly trying times, The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin, is a heart-breaking story about the ignorance that did more than divide a town. Set in 1963 Millwood, Mississippi, the story describes a heavily segregated town divided into three sections, Millwood "proper", Milltown where the white working poor lived and Shake Rag on the south side of the colour line of town. Florence Forrest, who at the beginning of the novel is eleven years old, narrates The Queen of Palmyra. The reader views the segregated town and the effect it has on the inhabitants through the innocent eyes of Florence. Martha, Florence's mother, is a cake baker who happens to have a habit of going out to purchase beer from the non-white bootleggers on the same nights her husband goes out. Win Forrest cannot hold down a job, so finally he settles on selling burial insurance by day and is a part of the Klan in the evenings. Florence spends a great deal of her time in the care on Zenie, who tells her stories about the queen of Palmyra. Florence enjoys being with Zenie, her husband Ray and Zenie's cousin Eva. The excessively hot summer of 1963 brings about many experiences and changes to Millwood, which began when Florence proudly and innocently informs her father that Eva is trying to sell burial insurance in Shake Rag and to further fuel her racist father's fire he learns Eva is attending college, one purportedly to be filled with agitators, NAACP members, and followers of the Evers brothers. Florence is proud of Eva and looks up to her and what occurs that hot summer of 1963 shakes the very foundation of everything Florence ever believed. As an eleven-year-old she witnesses atrocities no one should ever have the bear, let alone a child. Florence was surrounded by extremely strong willed women who helped to ground her, educate her and help her to discover the true meaning of love, loyalty and compassion. The Queen of Palmyra is an extraordinary debut novel, filled with hardship, tragedy and life lessons. Gwin's characters are realistic and those who are good are indeed loveable and those who not are most definitely portrayed as such. Even though Zenie was paid to care for young Florence it was possibly one of the best things for her in addition to all the time she spent with her grandparents Mimi and Grandpops. The Queen of Palmyra is not an upbeat novel, yet a novel well worth reading, showcasing a part of history many never knew existed or would prefer to ignore. The Queen of Palmyra would be an excellent discussion group pick.
    • 4/5
      The pitch I was sent for The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin compared the book to The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Of course, I accepted. However, I would like to put this out there, I think that the comparison hinders The Queen of Palmyra. The only thing the two novels share is the same era and state. The Queen of Palmyra focuses on a little girl named Florence Irene Forrest. Florence is what those of us who are uncouth call white trash. Her family is poor, her dad is scary, and her mom finds solutions at the bottom of a bottle. Florence became eyewitness to the violence which plagued Mississippi during the 1960s.This book hurt to read. I did not devour this book as I did The Help. This is because The Queen of Palmyra was so painful. I do not mean painful as in, oh what a horrid, horrid book. I mean painful in the way that reading about emotional abuse and neglect and what I felt were allusions to sexual abuse does not feel refreshing or uplifting. It just feel heavy. I absolutely could feel for Flo, though. She seemed to always be on the outside of everything. She was never able to completely fit in. She tries so hard to become close with a family of color, who are servants to her rich grandparents, however, there's a divide between them. With the violence of the South, I can't exactly blame Zenie, the woman who is head of the family Flo tries to fit into.I thought the racism of the era was palpable in this novel, it always felt dangerous. Afterall, there was a consistent undercurrent of fear, especially when it came to scenes with Flo's father, Winston. He is utterly terrifying. He's the embodiment of what I picture the KKK to be. He's ill educated. He is rude. He threatens those he believes to be less than him. He describes himself to be like a white knight protecting the virtue of his little girl. Completely disgusting.However, the theme I took the most away from this book was that of intrapersonal relationships. One could see how Flo was an island, and essentially remained one. Yes, there were times when she tried to reach out to people, but it seemed that no one fully gave themselves over to her. I always felt she lingered. She didn't fit in with the children because of her family background. She didn't fit in at Zenie's because of her father. I thought she grew up too fast because of her solitude, and what can I say, I felt terrible for her. I think it's horrible to lose your childhood so quickly.The Queen of Palmyra is not an uplifting story. You won't walk away from this book with a love of humanity. But perhaps you'll walk away for it with consideration of the suffering of others.
    • 4/5
      The Queen of Palmyra, the debut novel by Minrose Gwin, will find a welcome audience in fans of Kathryn Stockett's The Help.Both books are set in Mississippi in the 1960s, and deal with the changing relationship between blacks and whites. While The Help is told from the viewpoint of four narrators, The Queen of Palmyra is told by twelve-year-old Florence Forrest.Florence is the daughter of Win, a burial insurance salesman who also happens to be a rabid Klansman. Her mother Martha drinks to excess, and bakes cakes out their tiny home to bring in some cash to this poor household. Martha despises Win's racism, and her attitude is not appreciated by Win or the small minded people in their town.Flo spends much of her time at her maternal grandparents, in the company of Zenie, the maid. Because Martha drank so much, Flo spent a lot of time with Zenie, even going home with Zenie when she finished work.Zenie's young, beautiful, smart niece Eva comes to stay during her summer break from college. Eva is of a younger generation, and she has different ideas about her place in life. She gets a job selling burial insurance policies, which causes conflicts with Win. These conflicts turn dangerous, and Eva is attacked.When she won't back down and leave town, race relations come to a boil. Zenie and her husband Ray fear for Eva, and for themselves, as the Klansmen become bolder in spreading their violence and hatred. Because Flo is a young girl, she doesn't completely understand what is going on. She loves Zenie and Eva, and her parents, and as children are want to do, speaks her mind. She can't reconcile why people she loves can't get along.The author does a good job describing the atmosphere in this small town at the time, and the scene where Win takes his daughter to a Klan meeting is frightening and veers into creepy as Win puts his daughter in a robe and hood, and various men try to grope her. It is very disturbing.I also thought that the complicated relationship between Zenie, Ray and Flo was well done. Zenie and Ray were frequently exasperated at having to care for a white girl who had been abandoned by her mother. While The Klan was terrorizing the black community, Flo would show up at their doorstep and not understand why she was not welcome.The novel is filled with tension- between Win and Martha, Martha and her parents, blacks and whites, Zenie and Eva. The characters are believeable, people just struggling to live life as best they can under the circumstances. Some succeed (Zenie) but for others, life is too difficult (Martha).Having Flo narrate the novel echoes Scout, the narrator of the classic To Kill a Mockingbird, but that also has it drawbacks. Questions go unanswered, such as why Flo did not attend school, and what happened to them during the year she and her family "disappeared". I found that not knowing these things distracted me. The Queen of Palmyra is a dark book, but it gives the reader a real look at the what life was like at that time in small town Mississippi. The turbulent relationship between blacks and whites, and between a young daughter who just wanted the love of her very different parents is hard to look at, and yet it gives the reader a real sense of empathy.
    • 5/5
      The Short of It:I loved this book. The story deals with some heavy themes but as it unfolds, it sort of falls gently upon your shoulders and really allows you to experience it and take it in.The Rest of It:To be clear, I really loved this book. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I opened its pages but what I found inside was a real treat. Sometimes you fall in love with a book because of the writing. Other times, you fall in love with the characters or while reading it, you just find yourself lingering over every piece of it because it just “fits” you. Although the writing is lovely, what I really enjoyed about this book was that it was filled with wonderful characters and it just seemed to fit me as a reader. It was a good mix of childhood adolescence and larger adult themes.The story is told from Florence’s point-of-view and at the age of eleven, she pretty much tells it like it is. She’s wiser than her years in many ways but at times her innocence comes through and reminds you that she is in fact, just a child. As tensions rise and race continues to divide the community, she struggles to find her place and is sort of swept away with the tide, bouncing from one household to another and not really fitting in anywhere. As rough as this period is for her, I found myself rooting for her, knowing that she’d come out of it okay. Maybe not perfect, but okay and if you’ve had a rough childhood, okay is pretty darn good.Although I found myself relating to Florence the most, I enjoyed many of the other characters even though I never really liked them. In other words, these people would not be my friends, but the author makes them fleshy and whole and spends a great deal of time giving us all of the wonderful details that make them who they are. The smells, the oily sheen of hair oil upon a head, the way they carry themselves, etc. These characters don’t have to say much. There are moments when all they do is sit or stare but somehow the author conveys their thoughts through their posture and mannerisms. It takes skill for an author to speak volumes while the character remains mute.When Eva Greene arrives, it’s as if the door to Florence’s world suddenly opens. Being around the same people day in and day out, you tend to get used to them but with Eva, Florence begins to notice things that she didn’t notice before and that’s when she begins to grow as a character. The presence of Eva made all things real.If I had to compare this to another book I’d have to say that it did remind me of The Help, but just a little bit. The help (Zenie and Ray) do play a key role in this story, but the relationships are not as endearing as the ones in The Help. That’s not to say that weren’t as powerful. The relationships in The Queen of Palmyra were quite powerful but a bit more subtle. As for Florence, she has the same feel as Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird but she also reminds me of Francie from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. She definitely has her own voice though.I could go on and on about this novel. If you pick it up (and I really hope you do) let me know so we can chat about it. This is one of those books that you want to discuss but so far I’ve only come across one other person who’s read it