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MY ONLY SUNSHINE a novel by Lou Dischler
Hub City Press -- October 1, 2010
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My Only Sunshine was a 2010 “okra pick” of the Southern Independent Bookstore Alliance
My Only Sunshine won a silver IPPY for fiction from the South in 2011.
Buy Sunshine at
Your local bookstore or Hub City Press (some signed copies available) or the following
Praise for My Only Sunshine
“A great, great addition to the comic southern novel.” —George Singleton, author of The Half Mammals of Dixie
“It was a hoot to begin with, and I like it better every time I read it.” —C. Michael Curtis, fiction editor of the Atlantic Monthly
“A rollicking fun read.” —Jill McCorkle, author of Going Away Shoes
Excerpt
The minister’s wife and their hulking son went out with Dan and Lona to fetch the bibles from their car. Dan had just taken out the second box of twenty-four bibles when a wail came from the house, like a man both killing and being killed. Then another wail, even more murderous than the last. A moment later the minister burst through the front door, his face apoplectic, bellowing like a madman: “Cursed pornographers! Damned filth from New Orleans!”
“Oh no!” his wife cried, clapping her hands together.
“Jonas!” he cried to his son, “drop that box of dung!”
“Tubble?” his wife said. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong! What’s wrong! We’ve been hoodwinked by reprobates!”
“Now Reverend,” Dan began.
“Hold your tongue, you fiend. You can tell your lies to the judge.”
The minister spun around for the house, but in his excitement lost his balance and tumbled backward off the porch. Lying unmoving in the dirt, face up, Dan first thought he was dead, but no, for he began cough and sputter, and then began yelling. Yelling for his son to shoot these dogs, these damnable pornographers. His son knelt next to him, but the old man shouted in his face and began hitting the boy on the arm. Finally, after a crunching blow to his ear, the boy stumbled up and ran into the house, the screen door snapping behind him.
In the midst of this tumult, Dan had tossed the abandoned boxes of bibles into the open trunk and slammed it shut. He and Lona jumped in the front seat and they were now rolling, the Roadmaster’s tires scratching hard at gravel. They made it to the end of the driveway just as the son got back to the porch, armed with a rifle.
“Destroy them, boy!” bellowed the minister, who now was sitting up with the help of his wife. “Shoot those dogs with old Nellie!” Nellie was the name of the gun, apparently, the Great War souvenir that had long rusted on the mantle in their sitting room.
Gravel crunched. Grackles flew up from the cornfield along the road, blackening the sky. Dan threw the Buick into second. Past the gate now, Lona was laughing. She was beautiful when she laughed, Dan thought, and the wad of cash in her hands was even more beautiful.
A red-haired Madonna with a presidential bouquet.
This vision was destroyed in an instant when he glanced in the rearview. The boy was pointing that German relic at him, and the minister was crying, “Shoot them! Shoot them!” A smoke ring burped from its muzzle and a bullet cut the air, squalling by Dan’s window. Then two more cut into the trunk, thundering like great hammer blows. Lona squealed and ducked, dropping the wad of cash. George Washingtons swirled around in the car.
“Dammit!” Dan cried, for the day was ruined; their profit had flown out the window.
© 2010 by Lou Dischler
Interview at Somerset Communications
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