The Good Time Gospel Boys

Everyone in Taylor Springs, Kentucky, knows just how to behave--and deny what is really going on--including the painfully shy, astonishingly fat Lucille Byrd, who blossoms every time the Good Time Gospel Boys come to town

Taylor Springs, Kentucky is a sleepy town where little occurs, and even less is admitted. Operating on the premise that anything that isn't acknowledged doesn't exist, the town's best families suppress their own racial origins, accept the indiscretions of the minister's wife, ignore the brutality of the school principal, and believe an unlikely version of a local hunting tragedy. But the black servants in these white homes know the truth and keep it alive until all is exposed one night in 1940, when the Good Time Gospel Boys pay their annual evangelical visit. First novelist Bittinger has told a humorous and ribald tale of Southern hypocrisy which many will find entertaining. However, the author shows little compassion for the characters, focusing instead on their flaws. Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale Copyright 1987 Cahners Business Information.

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Set during the Depression in fictional Taylor Springs, Ky., Bittinger's first novel is both laugh-out-loud funny and shockingly violent. There is no central character, and no formal storyline. Instead, the plot unfolds around the hypocrisies fostered by the town's prominent families. On the surface, the Taylors, Byrds and Philpots live quietly. Incest, adultery, homosexuality and murder are things polite people do not discuss, much less experience. That the town's black population tends to be light-skinned, and the white citizens dark-complected, is also never mentioned. Then the Good Time Gospel Boys quartet visits Taylor Springs, inadvertently supplying the impetus that shakes the skeletons out of the closets. Bittinger's narrative teems with atmosphere, eccentric characters and bizarre incidents. There is so much going on, in fact, that readers may occasionally find themselves lost in the plethora of material. Ultimately, though, everything is brought to a solid and satisfying conclusion. (February 16) Copyright 1986 Cahners Business Information.