Rubio’s post-Civil War novel shows a family beyond unusual   In this captivating epic, set in post-Civil War southern Georgia, Gwyn Hyman Rubio, the acclaimed author of Oprah selection Icy Sparks, sweeps us into a world where upper-class wealth intersects with the poverty of laboring shantytowns, a place where terrible human suffering manifests itself. Flannery O'Connor defines the grotesque in Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction. She states that the writer of grotesque works "has made alive some experience which we are not accustomed to observe every day, or which the ordinary man may never experience in his ordinary life." She further explains that the character's "fictional qualities lean away from typical social patterns toward mystery and the unexpected." By that definition, Rubio's work, with its allusions to voodoo magic and divining crystals, is extraordinary and grotesque in the best sense of the word. The book opens with the Miller daughters, one sighted and one blind, discussing how their father's turpentine smell beats him home on the wind. Mrs. Miller, the laudanum-addicted mother, mutters in the background. Driven to the woods of his turpentine business by his family, Monroe Miller participates in all aspects of life in his workers' shantytown, including the vividly depicted cockroach races. In Monroe's absence, his two daughters, confused by their combination of love and scorn for their alcoholic father, form a fierce bond with their cook, Katie Mae. Dalia Miller's struggle to come to terms with her parents' legacy ultimately lies at the heart of this novel. When Katie Mae divulges Monroe's secret, the root of his family's perennially disturbed condition, the violet-eyed Dalia heroically transforms herself from a girl incapable of defending her blind sister into a courageous young woman. Ultimately, Dalia overwhelms even her abusive husband, a man who is so overpowering that he "steals" her breath. She then takes dramatic measures to protect her own daughter, Clara Nell, from their harsh world. Despite the folk remedies Dalia employs, she can't shield her family from the smell of death as it wraps itself around them in a cabin deep in the Georgia swamps. As one character puts it, "filth like illness has a way of returning." Aside from masterfully depicting the struggles of a wonderfully flawed family, Rubio reveals her talent at choosing language and settings that drive the plot. In sentences such as, "It was then the wind began to blow fiercely, making pecan trees throw tantrums against the glass," Rubio magically weaves the landscape into the story's suspense. Her descriptions of a haze that "syrups the air" made me feel as though I had been set down in a small town in Georgia. Gwyn Hyman Rubio proves that as a storyteller, she is one of the South's new treasures. Reviewed by Lucy Flood, Lexington Herald-Leader, September 18, 2005