Small Victories

Southern gothic touches lace this dark, por­ten­tous story of fam­ily lies revealed and griev­ances redressed. In Passion & Prejudice, Bingham described the bit­ter con­flicts that beset sev­eral gen­er­a­tions of her own fam­ily, which owned the Louisville Courier-Journal. She sets this, her sec­ond novel, in a small North Carolina town circa 1958. Louise, the elder of two middle-aged sis­ters, qui­etly cares for child­like Shelby, who suf­fers unpre­dictable seizures and emo­tional storms. Baffled and embar­rassed by Louise’s refusal to put Shelby in an insti­tu­tion, their beloved cousin Big Tom, a state sen­a­tor, forces her hand. While cast­ing about for ways to free Shelby, Louise tries might­ily to strip emo­tional blind­ers from the eyes of Big Tom’s tor­mented son, a Harvard sopho­more head­ing for a ner­vous breakdown.

“Sallie Bingham recalls Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty and bril­liantly brings their legacy into our mod­ern age.”
— Carolyn See

Reviews:

“Louise, the elder of two middle-aged sis­ters, qui­etly cares for child-like Shelby, who suf­fers unpre­dictably seizures and emo­tional storms. Baffled and bewil­dered by Louise’s refusal to put Shelby in an insti­tu­tion, their beloved cousin, Big Tom, a state sen­a­tor, forces her hand….”
— Publishers Weekly

“Effectively switch­ing view­points… Bingham por­trays a dys­func­tional south­ern fam­ily at its worst, where the appear­ance of love is more impor­tant than love itself.”

“Bingham writes evoca­tively of the South and the paral­y­sis of unmet emo­tional needs.”
— Library Journal

“A shriv­ing fam­ily por­trait gallery, both com­pas­sion­ate and ruth­less.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“The drama in this absorb­ing novel is not in events, how­ever, but in the ten­sion between Louise, who enjoys the “small vic­to­ries” of her life with Shelby, and Big Tom, who is embar­rassed by them.”
— The New York Times

“The small vic­tory is in mak­ing a choice, act­ing on your own des­tiny.”
— The Los Angeles Times

From an inter­view with the author…

Question: “Your new novel con­cerns the myths that a pow­er­ful, wealthy Southern fam­ily cre­ates. Why are these fam­i­lies ele­vated to an almost royal status?”

Sallie: “I don’t think it’s par­tic­u­larly south­ern. Look at the Bush fam­ily. I think it has to do with the fact that 1 per­cent of this coun­try owns 60 per­cent of the assets. And in order to jus­tify that inequal­ity, we tend to ele­vate those fam­i­lies. A hun­dred years ago it would have been the Vanderbilts. I comes down to this: How do we deal with the fact that the coun­try is so out of bal­ance? One option is to revolt; the other option is to elevate.”

— Interview in the Boston Globe

View all of Sallie's online writing in her archives.