When I was younger, I remember being so eager to see books by my favorite authors that whenever possible, I picked them up at the bookstore, went home and read them in one sitting.
When I was 35 and living in St. Louis, I bought Stephen King’s “It” in the late afternoon of a day off, went home and started reading and didn’t stop till I had finished the 1,100-page book until nearly 6 a.m.
Those were the days.
I don’t do that anymore. For one thing, I don’t have the stamina anymore and my eyesight isn’t what it was nearly 40 years ago. For another, I rarely make it into bookstores anymore. Nearly everything I buy is from Amazon and most of those are ebooks for my Kindle.
There’s one thing interesting about that. With Amazon and ebooks, they are usually available just after midnight on the release date.
No writer has ever left me more impatient for his books than Greg Iles. It has been about 20 years since I discovered his books and I’m pretty sure I have read every one of his novels. They have all been good — among Southern writers, I would rate Iles maybe one step below the great Pat Conroy — but his Penn Cage series will be what he’ll be remembered for most.
Starting with “The Quiet Game” in 2000, the series is set in and around Natchez, Miss., and if there is one thing it has done for me, it has enabled me to see a Mississippi beyond the hellhole of the Civil Rights years. The books are set in and around Natchez, which was once the wealthiest city in the state.
Mississippi is one of only four states I have never visited, although I was offered a job in McComb — about 75 miles east southeast of Natchez — in 1983. I never really considered it. The climate alone made it a no for me, although I never really wanted to live in Mississippi.
It was after the third book — “The Devil’s Punchbowl” — in 2009 that things got a little off track. Iles had a book planned that would be a climax to the series, but the story kept growing and growing and eventually became three books — “Natchez Burning,” “The Bone Tree” and “Mississippi Blood.”
Between the expanding story and numerous health crises for the writer, it was eight years before the trilogy was completed. Iles was in a serious auto accident that cost him a leg and for the last few years he has been battling blood cancer.
I never really expected there to be another Penn Cage novel, but a couple of years ago I read that “Southern Man,” set 15 years after “Mississippi Blood,” would be out in May 2023. I wound up hugely disappointed. The day before it was scheduled for release on Amazon, the release date was pushed back to May 2024.
I bought it as soon as I could. It’s more than 950 pages and I’m nearly halfway through it. So far it’s a mixed blessing. Cage himself is nearing the end and has bad health problems. The only other major character from the earlier books is his daughter Annie, grown to adulthood and practicing law.
I’m actually not reading most of the book. I don’t really read all that much anymore. My eyes aren’t what they once were, so most of the “reading” I do is audiobooks. Actually, listening to someone else read the book is good for my comprehension. I have always had a tendency to skim and scan and jump ahead, so listening and hearing every word is actually good for me.
I have high hopes for the second half of the book.