Home in the Morning by Mary Glickman is a novel I’ve had in my reading pile for awhile and I’m still extremely eager to pick it up. At it’s heart is a Southern novel with a male lead character, but I absolutely think it’s something Chick Lit readers would be drawn to. Now, if only life and that ever increasing review request pile would slow down just a bit I’d probably get to it a bit sooner. Until then I thought I’d let you all in on a bit of very exciting information!

For a short time, until June 15th 2011, Home in the Morning by Mary Glickman (the eBook version) will be on sale for only $2.99 USD on Amazon! Which is, in my opinion, a fantastic price! In addition to that the publisher has provided the first chapter as an excerpt to Chick Lit Reviews readers! Take a look below for the synopsis and then click the “read more” link to view the chapter excerpt, I have no doubt you’ll be intrigued!

A powerful debut from a new literary talent, this novel tells the story of a Jewish family confronting the tumult of the 1960s—and the secrets that bind its members together

Jackson Sassaport is a man who often finds himself in the middle. Whether torn between Stella, his beloved and opinionated Yankee wife, and Katherine Marie, the African American girl who first stole his teenage heart; or between standing up for his beliefs and acquiescing to his prominent Jewish family’s imperative to not stand out in the segregated South, Jackson learns to balance the secrets and deceptions of those around him. But one fateful night in 1960 will make the man in the middle reconsider his obligations to propriety and family, and will start a chain of events that will change his life and the lives of those around him forever.

Home in the Morning follows Jackson’s journey from his childhood as a coddled son of the Old South to his struggle as a young man eager to find his place in the civil rights movement while protecting his family. Flashing back between his adult life as a successful lawyer and his youth, Mary Glickman’s riveting novel traces the ways that race and prejudice, family and love intertwine to shape our lives.
This ebook features rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

Home in the Morning

Mary Glickman

ONE

Spring, 1995

JACKSON SASSAPORT WAS NAMED FOR both the capital of Mississippi and his uncle Yakov, signifying him instantly as Southern and Jewish and, as such, the perfect husband, a man chivalrous and loquacious at once. He had no ability to mislead his wife and harbored far less the desire to do so, for his sensibilities were especially fine. Stella was a trial of a woman, a virago of passionate pursuits who regularly forgot him. Everyone said she was fortunate to land him. And land him she did. After many years, he remained famously devoted to her. To watch her thrash on her dressing room couch in her party clothes on a night that represented the triumph of her career distressed him almost more than it did her to present him with that unholy spectacle: tendrils of red hair flashing like whips, the pulsing veins of her long pale neck, her lips gone white from clamping together to stifle a ragged moan that escaped as a dull murmur of grief. He watched her tantrum helplessly, afraid to touch her.

When she could speak, Stella said: I am not going if she¹s there, and that¹s that. I cannot. I will not. I won’t.

 

She was still for the moment, so he rushed forward and dropped to one knee before the tufted chaise where she sprawled, defiant in mauve taffeta and blue silk.

That’s ridiculous, he said, in his dark Mississippi drawl, as soothing a tone as man can muster. This is your night. Everyone will be there. Your family. Your brothers, your mama. Mine.

Precisely! Precisely! Stella bolted upright. Her oval eyes went round with anger and impatience. Dear dotty Mother, who waited how long for this night? Forty-eight years? She gave up on me in Œ67. Her mind’s been gone since Œ92. She thinks it¹s our wedding anniversary. The boys. They don’t respect me. They’re both divorced. I can see them now, sitting with Katherine Marie jolly as clams lettin’ her spike them up. Your mama? She’s been waiting for me to fall on my face since the day we met. No. I¹m not going. I’m not.

She rose from the chaise and glided to the bed, where she fell back against the comforter and a flotilla of pillows. Her gaze fixed on the ceiling as she muttered. Gawd. That heifer. Gawd.

Her legs were spread and uncovered, as were her arms. In love with her more than thirty years, Jackson Sassaport was moved by the sight. He got on the bed too, made to stroke her in consolation. Taking a chance‹any false move when Stella was like this could be disastrous‹he kissed her, and because he remained in love with her after thirty years, he could not ignore her breasts or her backside when she relaxed a little, and that’s why Stella was late for her own party. No matter what Katherine Marie said later on, it had little to do with her, less than a jot.

Always the gentleman, Jackson let his wife doze a few minutes afterward while he washed up and put his pants back on then located her panties and shoes, laying them out on the chaise while she repaired her face. She left the bathroom impeccably groomed and in a clearly improved mood, although her eyes were red. Leaning on her husband’s shoulder while she slipped on her heels, she said: Long as I have you, Mr. Sassaport, I’ll be ok. They enjoyed a quiet connubial embrace. Why don’t you leave Katherine Marie to me? he murmured in her ear. I’d be honored by the opportunity. Stella declined. I can handle her. I was just upset at the thought of seeing her at first. It wasn’t pleasant news. She squared her shoulders, filled her chest with air. I’m ok now. I can handle her.

She gave her hair a final brushing. He smiled at her back. This was the Stella Sassaport he knew, loved. He couldn’t help himself. Strong, exceptional women of mercurial natures peppered his family tree, they were the sum of the dalliances, flirtations, and romances of his youth. They were the women who fed, clothed, coddled, trained, excited, enchanted, and tortured him from the hour of his birth until the day he escaped into Stella Godwin’s arms, or so he thought on his wedding day. On that day, he felt he¹d married his anti-mother/auntie/cousin/crush, but before the first decade was out, he became convinced he¹d married the same old she-wolf in the clothing of a different sheep. He experienced an epiphany on this point quite literally at the hand of the self-same Katherine Marie whose name on the faxed final guest list had thrown Stella into her fit. Jackson’s epiphany, like all epiphanies, had a self-evident truth at its core: It was too late to change. Years too late. Whatever Stella was, and there was much that terrified him, he was hers, every ounce of him. If she was like all the others, well, so be it. At least she’d surpassed her type. Nonetheless, he still recalled Katherine Marie¹s words exactly. They visited him at the oddest times, when nothing particular was going wrong, when Stella rested between projects, when life was quiet, when life was good.

You’ve been corrupted! Katherine Marie charged that night, stabbing a bony finger into his chest. It’s insane you can’t see what she’s done to you! Changed you into a lowlife weasel! My dear white Southern gentleman manqué. You are a fraud! No true gentleman would do what you’ve done! For what? For her!

Her tirade was a startling event to Jackson, especially in its naked display of feminine venom, but Stella laughed, hugging herself when he told her about it. She nearly rolled off the bed. For a time, he was insulted she wasn’t insulted on his behalf. In those days, Katherine Marie was Stella’s latest enthusiasm, a fact of life Jackson Sassaport could either like or lump. Epiphany underscored.

Jackson Sassaport was of the Savannah Sassaportas, seven generations, three states, and a vowel removed from their patriarch, Baruch Sassaporta, a colonist trader with a fleet of three tall ships that made the family fortune. Baruch’s people were from Portugal by way of London, thanks to the Inquisition. Jackson’s great-granddaddy, another Yakov, not recognized by Baruch Sassaporta’s direct heir when some Slavic blood finagled its way into the Portuguese strain, had wandered through Georgia and Alabama before setting up shop in Hinds County, Mississippi, with his brother, Yosel. Both men married clever, ambitious women who bred like rabbits and ran them like overseers. Bella and Hannah were the architects of the Anglicization of the name Sassaporta, an appellation the locals had trouble with as they were not familiar as Savannah folk were with the venerable names of colonial shipping, making two syllables of the port and dropping the a altogether, at least it seemed to the brothers and their wives, although the poh-art was followed by an exhalation of breath that would have been taken by more musical ears for a delicately aspirated. At the insistence of those two balabustas, Sassaporta’s Dry Goods became Sassaport Clothiers, Yakov became Jack, and Yosel became Joe. In subsequent generations, Sassaport Clothiers begat Sassaport Furniture which begat Sassaport Lighting which begat Sassaport Plumbing Fixtures which begat Sassaport General Emporium which begat Sassaport Grocery until even a Sassaport Fish and Tackle was added to the register. By the time Jackson came along, there wasn’t a citizen of Hinds County who did not have a Sassaport product in his larder, his living room, his closets, his bath, his garage. Jackson¹s father was a third son and not obligated to join the family business. He became a physician. Jackson chose the law.

It was not what his father intended. Dr. Howard Sassaport expected to establish a medical dynasty just as his grandfather had sired a retail one. This feat was meant to enshrine his name in the family narrative at a par with Jack and Joe, its heroes, the husbands of Bella and Hannah, they whose names were invoked repeatedly in the rearing of children, the constant discussions at the uncles roundtable on the expansion of market, and at holiday gatherings. In his grandiose moments, the doctor imagined himself as revered by the progeny as the great Baruch Sassaporta himself. Unfortunately, he chose Missy Fine as his bride, selected for her wide hips and thick bones, which he fancied indicated that a sturdy mother slept within them, awaiting his seed to waken her destiny. The daughter of a man who wholesaled shoes from factories up north, Missy Fine was plump and pretty, black-eyed, chestnut-haired, a bored, fierce-minded creature who dreaded more than anything else winding up like her mother behind a counter in some frigid warehouse figuring sums in a green eyeshade. When Dr. Howard Sassaport came to call, she saw her way out of four generations of shopkeeping. With a desperate energy the smitten doctor failed to notice, she divined his dreams and promoted his cause convincingly. Big families are the Lord’s greatest blessing, she avowed to him on moonlit nights until his ring was on her finger, then after popping out a paltry two doctoral candidates in seven years, she declared she was too frail to go through that ordeal again. She abandoned the nursery, leaving her second boy in the care of the hired help and Jackson to flounder on his own, retired to the kitchen, and did not come out until she’d gained forty pounds three months later. Making do with the boys he had, Dr. Sassaport was ripe for colossal failure.

Jackson was the eldest. When he was small, the idea of following in his father¹s footsteps appealed, largely because the man was rarely home while his son was awake. His person was entirely mysterious to the boy. Of the doctor’s activities, Jackson was aware only that they were adorned with his mother’s most intense respect. He knew Daddy helped sick people, but Jackson was always in perfect health himself even childhood diseases passed over him like the Angel of Death in Egypt‹so he had only the vaguest notions of what sick meant. By five, he’d had his share of scrapes and bruises, but he had no experience of wounds that gushed or festered. In his imagination, sick people had stomachaches or coughed like Cook.

If he’d bothered to share this perception, others could be excused for thinking the boy a bit slow, especially since he and Mama brought a covered supper to Daddy’s office every Thursday night. On Thursdays, Dr. Sassaport kept evening hours at the office, principally for the sake of local laborers too poor to take time from day work so that the goiters choking their throats could be measured or the thick yellow veil masking the whites of their eyes assessed. They tended to wait until thirty minutes before the knife was indicated before limping up to the doctor’s front door (or its rear, as custom demanded for some). Charity day, Mama called it, and at first Jackson thought charity was the proper name of the day of the week between Wednesday and Friday. Yet the child could not be blamed for these ideas. When they brought Daddy supper, they entered the office through the side door, which led directly into his examining room. If Daddy had a patient with him, he did not allow them over the threshold. On the occasions they were granted entry, Jackson found nothing unusual in the place. It might as well have been an office in the bank or Uncle Tom-Tom¹s insurance company except for its tart, tangy smell, which the boy found similar enough to what Sukie used to scrub the floors at home to consider it only occasionally.

When Jackson achieved the age of five, his father deemed it high time for the boy to be introduced more intimately to the medical arts. His mother disagreed. He¹s too young for harsh realities, Mama said. Human beings can’t stomach much of it. Daddy countered: I can and I do. So will my son. If I acquaint him with reality during his tender years, he’ll take the nasty bits of life a heap more easily later on, Missy. I want him to grow a strong stomach. Hell, I want it crisscrossed with scars. Trust me, sweetheart. It’ll help him more later on than it’ll harm him now.

Asking for trust in such a situation was a dicey business with Missy Fine Sassaport. She trusted nothing but her own mind and‹it should be admitted at the git-go‹that curious entity’s homegrown conclusions were cast in stone as soon as they sprung from the gray matter and propelled themselves into the dull, waiting world. Studying her husband, gauging his determination, she drew in her chin making two of it. She crossed her arms above her chest using that colossal mass as a shelf on which to deposit her certitude.

You’re wrong, she declared emphatically in a tone that brooked no contradiction.

I’m the daddy, woman. I’ll do what I see fit.

Missy Fine Sassaport snorted her contempt.

Take the child, then. Ruin him if you need to. But when you return him to me, if that child’s in any way damaged, he is mine, ya hear? Mine.

She quit his company in a huff, marching upstairs for a lie-down, as she was tired from shopping all day and had no intention of wasting her precious energies on the losing side of a cockeyed dialectic. . .

Thank you to the publisher, Open Road, for the opportunity to share this information with Chick Lit Reviews readers!

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