CANR
WORK TITLE: Sweet Vidalia
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.lisasandlin.com/
CITY: Santa Fe
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
LAST VOLUME: CA 391
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born January 23, 1951, in Beaumont, TX; married (divorced); children: Evan.
EDUCATION:Rice University, B.A.; Vermont College, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. Taught writing at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI; University of Nebraska, Omaha, professor, became emeritus professor.
AWARDS:Recipient of National Education Association fellowship and the Dobie Paisano fellowship, University of Texas at Austin; Violet Crown Award, Austin Writers League and Jesse H. Jones Award, Texas Institute of Letters, both for Message to the Nurse of Dreams; Pushcart Prize; McGinniss Award; New Mexico Book Award for You Who Made the Sky Bend; Christopher Hewitt Award, A&U, 2013; Dashiel Hammett Prize, International Association of Crime Writers, 2015, and Shamus Award, Private Eye Writers of America, 2016, both for The Do-Right.
WRITINGS
Contributor of stories to anthologies, including USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series, edited by Johnny Temple, Akashic Books, 2013. Contributor to publications, including Crazy Horse, New York Times, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, and Story Quarterly.
SIDELIGHTS
Lisa Sandlin is a writer and educator. A native of Beaumont, Texas, she was a professor in the College of Communication, Fine Arts, and Media at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. She now resides in New Mexico.
Short-Story Collections
The Famous Thing about Death is Sandlin’s first short-story collection. Many of the stories are set in arid locations in Texas and New Mexico. Protagonists include a former ballet dancer, Native American soldiers, and a disabled war veteran. A Publishers Weekly reviewer described the book as “thick with a variety of voices and personalities” and a “promising debut short-fiction collection [that] marks Sandlin as a writer to watch.”
In 1997, Sandlin released her second short-story collection, Message to the Nurse of Dreams, which features stories set during the 1960s in Sandlin’s native Texas Gulf Coast. The title story focuses on an interracial friendship between two girls. The collection also includes the story “Move into It Babies,” which is about two girls who are former rivals who go on a joyride together. In an interview with Barbara Strickland for the Austin Chronicle, Sandlin recalled: “That one was a hard story to write, but once I found those two girls together—and that’s all made up, that joyride. The only true part of that is that a friend and I used to cruise the black radio station to wave at the deejay, try to get him to talk to us on the radio. That was always such a thrill.” In a review of the book in Library Journal, Vicki J. Cecil declared: “Sandlin … has done a masterly job.”
The stories in Sandlin’s 2004 collection In the River Province: Stories center on persons who have taken part in the Holy Week pilgrimage to a northern New Mexico church, the Sanctuary of Chimayo. The different narratives are set anywhere from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Praising Sandlin’s adept handling of different historical periods, Library Journal reviewer Mary Margaret Benson remarked: “Sandlin’s poetic prose is evocative of both time and place.”
Novels
Sandlin’s first novel, The Do-Right, returns to the Texas Gulf Coast setting of the stories in Message to the Nurse of Dreams. The year is 1973, and the protagonist, Delpha Wade, has recently been released from prison and is hoping to get her life back on track, now that she is done serving time for killing one of two men who had raped her. She begins working as a secretary for private detective Tom Phelan, a former oil rig worker, and together they investigate some quirky local mysteries. Meanwhile, Delpha falls for Isaac, a student at Princeton. Sandlin explained the book’s title and commented on the character of Delpha in an interview with Ed Battistella for Literary Ashland. Sandlin explained: “[Do-Right is] a colloquialism meaning ‘jail’ or ‘prison’ that I heard from my friend, a witty deputy sheriff in Georgia; as in: ‘We sent him to the do-right.’ (He also informed me about the designation ‘ticket-proof,’ which he was—and that he owns only twelve guns because ‘more are gratuitous.’) Delpha’s served fourteen years in prison. But now, on the outside, she’s wrestling with doing right according to her own lights. She carries hatred and resentment against those who hurt her, and she doesn’t necessarily buy the forgiveness-and-closure prescription.”
In a review for the Dallas Morning News, Shawna Seed stated: “Sandlin’s strength is that she’s not trying to show off. … Everything she writes furthers her plot or develops her characters.” Seed added: “As is often the case, the plot relies on a coincidence or two. But Phelan and Wade are such winning characters, readers are unlikely to hold a grudge.” Texas Observer writer Nico Vreeland remarked: “For better or worse, Sandlin eschews traditional plot in favor of just having things happen to her characters. In this first novel of what may be many to come, Tom and Delpha’s budding relationship and the initial stumbling of their fledgling business buoy the story through gaps in its plot.” Veronica Gonzalez, in a review for San Antonio’s Rivard Report, observed: “The novel was successful in combining two character scenarios into a stand-alone story. Such clever writing allows vivid imagery and realistic dialogue to be showcased in a book that portrays a woman’s mission to stay out of prison and to handle her demons. This is an intriguing story.” Writing for the Austin Chronicle, Rosalind Faires noted: “ The Do-Right is as much the story of Delpha’s halting return to the world outside of prison as it is a series of satisfying twists and turns (and there are some beautifully executed surprises throughout).”
The novel has received a number of other favorable reviews. In a review at My San Antonio, Steve Bennett commented: “Compared to a lot of noir, which tends to lay flat on the page, The Do-Right is like putting on the glasses at a 3-D movie. It dials up our emotions, with smarts, soul, grit and flashes of humor.” Booklist. reviewer Michele Leber likewise affirmed: “Sandlin captures time and place—the bayou country of Beaumont, Texas, in 1973—beautifully as she fashions a coincidence-laden but compelling plot.” A Publishers Weekly described “Sandlin’s clipped prose style” as “pleasingly eccentric,” and a writer for Kirkus Reviews thought that “Sandlin blends pathos, humor, and poetic prose in a strong debut,” even though certain aspects of the plot “fit together a little too snugly.” In Reviewer’s Bookwatch, Clint Travis summed up The Do-Right as “a superbly crafted story that grabs the readers total attention from beginning to end” and “demonstrates author Lisa Sandlin’s impressive mastery.”
[open new]Investigative activities continue apace in The Bird Boys, Sandlin’s next “Delpha Wade” mystery thriller. Delpha is just recovering from getting stabbed in the Phelan Investigations office when Tom takes the case of septuagenarian Xavier Bell, who is trying to find his brother, supposedly in order to reconcile with him. Meanwhile, a woman worried that her open marriage is cover for risky business on her husband’s part asks for help tracking him. As Delpha and Tom dig into research the old-fashioned way, they learn that a story of murder underlies the duplicitous Bell assignment.
In an interview with Ramona Gault, Sandlin explained that her impulse to give Delpha a background of imprisonment stemmed in part from her childhood. On the one hand, Sandlin mentioned, “I was a kid who longed to be grown up, thus childhood felt to me like a kind of prison.” Moreover, both sets of grandparents happened to live near prisons, one being the dark woodsy Huntsville prison where executions took place, the other being a boys’ reformatory that later became Gatesville Women’s Prison—the one where character Delpha spent fourteen years. Sandlin confided to Gault, “Both prisons loomed large in my imagination. If you’re punished a lot, it’s not a far leap to imagine yourself in prison.”
Marilyn Stasio of the New York Times judged The Bird Boys one of the year’s ten best crime novels. In Booklist, Michele Leber affirmed that Delpha Wade’s second novel “soars on the wings of its spot-on evocation” of the singular setting and its “utterly compelling” leads, whose relationship is notably founded in “mutual respect” as well as a “dash of sexual tension.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer similarly affirmed that what makes The Bird Boys “soar” is the “humanity and humility of its main characters,” while the narrative proves “by turns exciting, tender, suspenseful, observant, and gently funny.” A Kirkus Reviews writer found that what first unfolds like an “ordinary PI caper” evolves into something far more “elevated, poignant, and complex” as well as “beautifully written.” The reviewer found the novel to prove that “anything old can be new in the right, talented hands,” as Sandlin continues to craft an “outstanding series that readers will want to follow and savor.”
Sweet Vidalia, a stand-alone novel set in East Texas in 1964, finds fifty-seven-year-old Eliza Kratke stunned when husband Robert’s sudden death by heart attack prompts the emergence of a second Mrs. Kratke, who sweeps up Robert’s assets for his second family on the other side of town even as Eliza has been left with debilitating debt. Prevented from selling the house by a lien, Eliza manages to rent it out, move into an efficiency at the Sweet Vidalia Residence Inn, and enroll in a business course. With the lodgings full of students and young-adult drifters and the class members including a counterfeit-money artist and a gay man with the scoop on a secretary job, Eliza finds her life as well as unexpected business prospects looking up.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer remarked that Sandlin successfully evokes Eliza’s “can-do spirit as she perseveres through one challenge after another” in this moving “tale of redemption.” That reviewer hailed the novel as “chock-full of colorful characters,” and a Kirkus Reviews writer likewise found the novel “buoyant” as Sandlin “introduces new characters and dilemmas at a brisk pace” while demonstrating a “gift” for succinct portrayals. With its “nostalgic charm” and “quirky humor,” the Kirkus Reviews writer concluded that Sweet Vidalia “endearingly proves it’s never to too late to come of age.”[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, October 1, 2015, Michele Leber, review of The Do-Right, p. 25; May 1, 2019, Michele Leber, review of The Bird Boys, p. 22.
Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2015, review of The Do-Right; May 15, 2019, review of The Bird Boys; October 15, 2024, review of Sweet Vidalia.
Library Journal, September 1, 1997, Vicki J. Cecil, review of Message to the Nurse of Dreams, p. 222; May 15, 2004, Mary Margaret Benson, review of In the River Province: Stories, p. 118.
Publishers Weekly, June 21, 1991, review of The Famous Thing about Death, p. 56; August 3, 2015, review of The Do- Right, p. 34; May 20, 2019, review of The Bird Boys, p. 64; October 7, 2024, review of Sweet Vidalia, p. 119.
Reviewer’s Bookwatch, January, 2016, Clint Travis, review of The Do-Right.
ONLINE
Austin Chronicle Online, http://www.austinchronicle.com/ (February 6, 1998), Barbara Strickland, author interview; (February 26, 2016), Rosalind Faires, review of The Do-Right.
Dallas Morning News Online, http://www.dallasnews.com/ (October 17, 2015), Shawna Seed, review of The Do-Right.
Lisa Sandlin website, https://www.lisasandlin.com (January 29, 2025).
Literary Ashland, http://literaryashland.org/ (November 3, 2015), Ed Battistella, author interview.
My San Antonio, http:/ /www.mysanantonio.com/ (December 12, 2015), Steve Bennett, review of The Do-Right.
Mystery People, https://mysterypeople.wordpress.com/ (July 31, 2019), “They Commit Themselves: An Interview with Lisa Sandlin.”
New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/ (November 2, 1997), Bruce Allen, review of Message to the Nurse of Dreams.
Ramona Gault website, https://www.ramonagault.com/ (November 16, 2020), “New Mexico Author Q&A: Lisa Sandlin.”
Rivard Report, http:// therivardreport.com/ (March 20, 2016), Veronica Gonzalez, review of The Do-Right.
Texas Observer, http://www.texasobserver.org/ (May 2, 2016), Nico Vreeland, review of The Do-Right.
University of Nebraska–Omaha website, http://www.unomaha.edu/ (May 2, 2016), author profile.
Lisa Sandlin
USA flag
Lisa Sandlin is the author of of five collections of short fiction. Her work has appeared in Shenandoah, The New York Times, Southwest Review, Crazy Horse, Story Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the NEA Fellowship, a Dobie Paisano Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. The Do Right is her first mystery. Lisa was born in Beaumont and currently lives and teaches in Omaha, Nebraska.
Awards: Shamus (2016) see all
Genres: Mystery, Literary Fiction
New and upcoming books
December 2024
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Sweet Vidalia
Series
Delpha Wade
1. The Do-right (2015)
2. The Bird Boys (2019)
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Novels
Sweet Vidalia (2024)
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Collections
The Famous Thing About Death (1991)
Message to the Nurse of Dreams (1997)
In the River Province (2004)
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Lisa Sandlin
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Sandlin is the author of The Do-Right, winner of the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America and the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers. Her latest mystery thriller The Bird Boys is set in 1973 in the same town she was born, Beaumont, Texas, and was chosen by Marilyn Stasio as One of the Ten Best Crime Novels of the Year.
Her previous books are The Famous Thing About Death and Message to the Nurse of Dreams, Cinco Puntos Press; In the River Province, SMU Press; and You Who Make the Sky Bend, Pinyon Publishing.
Lisa’s unique journey has reaped its rewards: an NEA Fellowship, the Jesse Jones award from the Texas Institute of Letters for Best Book of Fiction, a Dobie Paisano Fellowship, Violet Crown Award, Pushcart Prize, New Mexico Book Award, and the Christopher Hewitt Award for Fiction from A&U, America’s AIDS magazine. That story was for Brian. She is an emeritus professor from The Writer’s Workshop, University of Nebraska Omaha.
When you explore her books, don’t miss You Who Make the Sky Bend, a special collaboration with renowned New Mexican retablo artist Catherine Ferguson.
Inquiries about Ms. Ferguson’s wonderful retablos may be sent to Lisa Sandlin.
November 16, 2020
New Mexico Author Q&A: Lisa Sandlin
Land Of Enchantment, New Mexico Authors, Southwest novels, Women Authors
Lisa02.jpg
The Do-Right and Bird Boys
Available from https://cincopuntos.com and independent bookstores, and online.
The best characters in fiction can almost feel like friends, but Lisa Sandlin’s Delpha Wade and Tom Phelan haunt me. The unlikely private investigator and his secretary are trying to make it in the business. If you saw their resumes, you wouldn’t bet on either one of them. Phelan is a former oil field roughneck and Wade an ex-con. The two mysteries are set in 1970s Beaumont, Texas, where Lisa was born.
Lisa’s voice and attention to setting will sink you into that gritty, noir oil city.
Lisa has won an NEA Fellowship, the Jesse Jones award from the Texas Institute of Letters for Best Book of Fiction, a Dobie Paisano Fellowship, Violet Crown Award, Pushcart Prize, New Mexico Book Award, and the Christopher Hewitt Award for Fiction from A&U, America’s AIDS magazine. The Do-Right received the 2016 Shamus Award for Best Debut Novel from the Private Eye Writers of America and the 2015 Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers.
Lisa, who lives in Santa Fe, is also the author of an acclaimed short story collection, In the River Province, which John Nichols called “a prose poem to New Mexico that will endure to become a classic.” Don’t miss this one! The stories are about people on the Good Friday pilgrimage to the Santuario de Chimayó. To order this title from the author, see her website: lisasandlin.com.
Ramona: Your two Delpha Wade mysteries have been praised for the masterful creation of setting. Beaumont, Texas, where you grew up, is without a doubt in your blood and your DNA. So did you have to do a lot of research to recreate 1973 Beaumont for the Delpha Wade books?
Lisa: I did not have to do a lot of research since Beaumont is my hometown. But I did some anyway, checking on businesses long gone, locations, highway numbers. I used, for example, a steakhouse that had an adjunct room with wood carvings by the owner. He called it Eye of the World, and it was a combination of world architecture and biblical scenes, totally oblivious to scale, camels large as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, etc. But it was a wonder. I used to run in there and study it all when I was a kid.
Ramona: It's a cliché question to ask an author where she gets her ideas. However, in this case, Delpha and Tom are so atypical as PIs, I have to ask how you dreamed them up.
Lisa: I was asked to write a story by Akashic Books out of Brooklyn for an anthology called Lone Star Noir. The story I wrote became The Do-Right eventually. I was thinking about it one day in my office and a student said, Hey why don't you make the secretary the hero? I liked that idea, so I put the emphasis on Delpha. Also it's easier for me to write from her point of view.
Ramona: I really admire how fully three-dimensional you've made Delpha, a woman who's had a very rough time and is now trying to build a life outside of prison. Was there something in particular that drew you to an ex-con as a character?
Lisa: I was a kid who longed to be grown up, thus childhood felt to me like a kind of prison. Additionally, importantly, my grandparents lived near two prisons. My mother's parents lived near Huntsville, called The Big House and The Walls, which is still where, sadly, Texas holds its executions. It's dark piney woods there and simply feels dark. My father's parents lived in Gatesville, home of the boys' reformatory, which eventually became Gatesville Women's Prison, Delpha's home for 14 years. Both prisons loomed large in my imagination. If you're punished a lot, it's not a far leap to imagine yourself in prison.
Ramona: Your style/voice has been described as “Chandleresque.” How did you find this voice?
Lisa: The voice is from my mother's parents. Once I hit on that, the book simply unspooled. It's not at all the voice in my other books. For me, the voice of the story has depended on the characters and plot. You'll see that easily in In the River Province. The last long story tells of Maria de Agreda, the Woman in Blue, a young Spanish abbess who claimed to fly to New Mexico several times a day to proselytize to the Indians. Independent accounts claim the Indians saw her. Its voice is light years from Delpha’s.
Ramona: You've taught writing at Wayne State and the University of Nebraska. What was your approach to teaching writing?
Lisa: Have students write, mainly, and discuss novels or stories they’d read. Do active exercises when possible. Very traditional. I always tried to have fun with it, though, because I consider writing/creating fun. (Most of the time.)
Ramona: In that vein, do you have any advice for writers who are trying to find their voice?
Lisa: Keep writing. You know that theory of 10,000 hours? (Eric Andersson, Malcolm Gladwell): Practicing any skill for 10,000 hours will make you an expert? I wouldn't say that was always true but it surely will make you conversant and improved. I’m also with Gladwell because I believe in talent. You just see it, even with beginning students: the original image, the feel for scene or dialog. The urgency to write. If you have that urgency, you likely have something to say.
Ramona: You’ve also written books set in New Mexico, such as In the River Province. Can you say something about what makes New Mexico such fertile soil for growing stories?
Lisa: New Mexico IS the Land of Enchantment, naturally speaking. The Sangre de Cristo mountains—I’ve stood in the parking lot of a Safeway watching a winter sunset change them to gold, amber, and magenta. The smell of piñon in the air in October brings your lifetime back, if you’ve lived here long. The riches of Native and Hispanic cultures mixed for centuries with Anglo traders and merchants and cowboys make it a place for an open point of view, as well as narrow ones. I go to the Deer Dance at San Ildefonso every year because it’s on my birthday, and it’s a sacred spectacle, a beautiful way to start the year, with drums and song and dance. When I was younger I walked the pilgrimage to Chimayó, another sacred event that connects you to what is holy to you, to the land, and to time.
They Commit Themselves: An Interview with Lisa Sandlin
July 31, 2019 bookpeopleatxLeave a comment
9781947627130_9b9d1Lisa Sandlin follows up her first detective novel The Do-Right, with The Bird Boys – it features Seventies era Texas Gulf P.I. Tom Phelan and his secretary, Delpha Wade – just released from prison for shooting her rapist – with their latest case. After dealing with the mess from the previous book, the two are hired to find a missing brother. The further they look into it, the more they realize one of them could be a killer. Lisa will be at BookPeople August 4th, at 2PM to discuss and sign her book. She was kind enough to take a few questions from us beforehand.
What made you decide to start The Bird Boys almost right after The Do-Right ends?
I got what I thought was a great idea—to makes the books (3 or 4) a seamless story. Maybe I was goaded by a comment from someone about sequels: how you have to tuck in necessary information so that readers can follow a sequel and how it must it stand on its own, as well, and I thought, Well, I’ll fix that an easy way: I’ll just keep on going. It sounded so practical. By the time I thought maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, I’d already written the scene with Delpha at the police station, and though my own wishes are not a consideration mostly, I wanted to keep that scene. So I cut others—one of Delpha in the hospital and a black doctor who’s having his own bad time with the white hierarchy—and just started with Phelan cleaning up the crime scene.
2. The book starts out as a missing persons case and develops into something more complex in both plot and morality. How did the idea come about?
I always knew it was about 2 brothers, only I didn’t know who was going to become the killer—I thought it would be the hiding brother. As a prompt from real life (as Dean Arnold Corll was an IRL prompt for “The Do-Right”) I used both Robert Durst, who commits murders over a very long period of time, and an old man my social worker friend Greg ran into. Called to the house by the concerned landlady (a routine social services call), Greg finds an old man with knives and peculiar stories. After time and reflection, he puts the disparate stories together and realizes that not only is this guy older than he thought (around 97) but he’s serially killed people over these long years. With that in mind, I made the character.
Not only do you get the details of the seventies, it many time feels like the novel was written during that era. Does the period have any effect on how you approach the books?
Sure. I’m bound by the history, even if I do fudge the chronology a bit sometimes, like moving the date of the Billy Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs tennis match, or a hurricane. I adore Wikipedia bc I can go there to jog my memory about events and find pictures to use for clothing, look up which songs were popular. Often I have songs in mind, but sometimes I find better ones. There was always a sound track, wasn’t there? I was young then so I remember the times and high points of current events—like sitting at the dinner table when Lyndon Johnson announced he wouldn’t run again, and my father almost spit out his coffee.
What makes Delpha and Tom good detectives, even though they are new to the profession?
One thing is the quality most writers have: they’re curious. They commit themselves to a matter/case and then they want to follow it through so they really know what happened. Second, they’ve got to make a living, both of them, so that keeps them going. Third, they wanted a new life, one different than they’d been living. Delpha, of course, wanted to construct a free life, and from scratch. Tom wanted the same, though on a smaller existential scale—he didn’t want bosses anymore.
What do you think having two detectives allows you to do with the mystery story as opposed to one?
Since they can each take different strands of a plot, the tenor of the scenes may be a bit different due to the personality and manner of each. Delpha, eager to learn, soaks up the information Mrs. Singer of the antique store has to teach her about rare objects. She soaks up the relationship between the brother and sister, who are also business partners of long standing. She’s intensely curious about their family bond, the quality of which is attractive to her. Tom wouldn’t react the same way. In “The Do-Right,” there’s a scene between him and an assistant chemist, in which the smart-mouth chemist ridicules him for lack of experience. It was great fun to write, and Tom gets the chemist back in the end. But that was not a Delpha scene.
Besides familiarity, what does the Galveston setting provide you as a writer?
It’s the Bolivar peninsula, really, that I’m familiar with. The wetlands scenes here are not even that far. I visited Anahuac and the lands around Winnie, and took notes on my phone, descriptions of the land. The place and the animals are beautiful, and they are still wild and free (since they’re nature preserves). I just like writing about that. (Bc I mourn what has happened to the Gulf. Mourn the loss of sand dunes and so much beach.) A German culture magazine will feature that excerpt soon.
You do a great job of depicting the research less glamorous aspects of the job without it being drudgery to read. How do you approach those scenes?
I’m really glad you say it isn’t drudgery to read—bc it WAS! When I first wrote it, I went through EVERY LAST STEP of research and discovery to make sure the plot was working and that I’d given enough info for the reader. One of my very first jobs was as a skip tracer for the Credit Bureau, so I knew some of those research materials. E.g., bc I love detail the way a poet does, I’d written passages about NOLA’s Blue Book, which Delpha comes across when researching City directories. Fascinating—but that part had to go. Anyone reading the book at that stage pulled their hair out—and told me so. Not until the German publisher strenuously objected did I pull myself up and rewrite the whole book with a stern eye to movement. Working 12 hours a day, I streamlined like crazy. October 2018, the girl worked hard for her money.
The Bird Boys
Lisa Sandlin
Cinco Puntos Press
701 Texas, El Paso, Texas 79901
www.cincopuntos.com
9781947627130, $16.95, PB, 306pp, www.amazon.com
Synopsis: "The Bird Boys" is the new mystery/suspense novel from author Lisa Sandlin and catches her readers up with the almost-murdered secretary Delpha Wade to whom we are first introduced in the novel "The Do-Right" (2015) as she's now released from a hospital in order to be tucked into the back seat of a police cruiser.
Her boss, P. I. Tom Phelan, sets out to spring her. He needs her back in his investigation business, where he'll soon be chasing a skulking grand larcenist and plotting how to keep a ganjapreneur out of the grabby hands of a brand new agency, the D.E.A.
Delpha digs through old records and knocks on strange doors to unravel the dangerous case of two brothers with beaucoup aliases--verifying that sometimes truth is not true, but murder is always murder.
Critique: Another perfectly penned novel by a master of the mystery/suspense genre, "The Bird Boys" is a wonderfully entertaining read from cover to cover and certain to be an enduringly popular addition to community library collections. It should be noted for the personal reading lists of all mystery buffs that "The Bird Boys" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $10.99) and as a complete and unabridged audio book (HighBridge Audio, 9781684572120, $29.99, CD).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
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"The Bird Boys." Wisconsin Bookwatch, Oct. 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A710688612/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=dc99512d. Accessed 8 Jan. 2025.
The Bird Boys. By Lisa Sandlin. July 2019. Cinco Puntos, paper, $16.95 (9781947627130); e-book (9781947627147).
Just months out of prison for involuntary manslaughter, Delpha Wade again is forced to defend herself as she kills a man, a convicted serial killer, who stabs her in the Phelan Investigations office. She's held by police (she's an ex-con, and in Beaumont, Texas, in the 1970s, that is a legacy not easy to overcome), but, finally, she is not charged and goes to work for PI Tom Phelan, helping him try to locate the brother of client Xavier Bell, who wants to patch things up with his sibling. But Bell is far from truthful, and the real story, slowly ferreted out, is darker and more complicated than it appeared initially. In the process, Delpha discovers the wonder of reference librarians and their provision of free information, and Tom gets involved in the case of a wife in an open marriage who wants to know what her husband is up to when he leaves town. Like her award-winning debut, The Do-Right (2015), also starring Delpha Wade, Sandlin's sequel soars on the wings of its spot-on evocation of a time and place and its utterly compelling central characters, Delpha and Tom, as their mutual respect and trust grows, along with a dash of sexual tension. A first-rate series crying for word-of-mouth support from all readers' advisors.--Michele Leber
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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Leber, Michele. "The Bird Boys." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 17, 1 May 2019, p. 22. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A587366614/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=fee9a189. Accessed 8 Jan. 2025.
Sandlin, Lisa THE BIRD BOYS Cinco Puntos (Adult Fiction) $16.95 7, 16 ISBN: 978-1-947627-13-0
A Texas private investigator and his assistant are hired by a man who is looking for his brother, but what unfolds is something completely different.
It's 1973 in Beaumont, Texas, and Tom Phelan is trying to make a go of Phelan Investigations with the help of his assistant, Delpha Wade, who is recovering from injuries inflicted by a serial killer in a previous case (The Do-Right, 2015). And that's only one of Delpha's problems. She went to prison at 18 for killing a man who raped her. Now 32, she's on parole and learning to navigate a world with freedom, choices, and even new social exchanges. "Congratulations to you," she says to someone about a new baby--a phrase she's never uttered before in her life. When an elderly man named Xavier Bell asks them to find his brother, Tom and Delpha's meticulous research uncovers more than anyone expects. What sounds like an ordinary PI caper, though, becomes something elevated, poignant, and complex in this beautifully written novel. The author's use of dialogue is perfectly regional, and her descriptions evoke a cross between Raymond Chandler and James Lee Burke. A briefcase "might have been rubbed with twenties to give it the mellow sheen," and "the desk man was a middle-aged cop whose starched shirt could have worked the shift without him." The author also conveys the realities of doing research in 1973, from using phone books and libraries to tracking down old paper records.
Proving that anything old can be new in the right, talented hands, Sandlin has crafted an outstanding series that readers will want to follow and savor.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Sandlin, Lisa: THE BIRD BOYS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A585227173/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1c257ea2. Accessed 8 Jan. 2025.
The Bird Boys: A Delpha Wade and Tom Phelan Mystery
Lisa Sandlin. Cinco Puntos, $16.95 trade paper (306p) ISBN 978-1-947627-13-0
Set in Beaumont, Tex., in 1973, Sandlin's excellent sequel to 2015's The Do-Right continues the adventures of Delpha Wade, who's on parole after serving 14 years for voluntary manslaughter, and fledgling PI Tom Phelan, who has hired Delpha as his secretary. Into Tom's office walks 75-year-old Xavier Bell, who asks the detective to locate his long-lost brother. Tom and Delpha soon suspect that Bell is not who he claims to be, and they realize that one of the two brothers is a killer. Meanwhile, Tom takes a case involving a wife who's afraid her husband is doing something illegal and wants Tom to stop him before he gets caught. Sandlin does a superb job of evoking pre-Google days when detectives had to know their way around the library and be ready to talk to scores of people in the hope of finding valid information. But what makes this crime novel soar is the humanity and humility of its main characters. It is by turns exciting, tender, suspenseful, observant, and gently funny. Readers will eagerly await the next installment. (July)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 PWxyz, LLC
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"The Bird Boys: A Delpha Wade and Tom Phelan Mystery." Publishers Weekly, vol. 266, no. 20, 20 May 2019, pp. 64+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A587765486/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b15a82c6. Accessed 8 Jan. 2025.
Sweet Vidalia
Lisa Sandlin. Little, Brown, $28(320p) ISBN 978-0-316-57800-4
An East Texas widow discovers her late husband was leading a double life in the appealing latest from Sandlin (Family Business). It's 1964 and Eliza Kratke, 57, is doubly crushed, first by the sudden death of her husband of 30 years, Robert, from what appears to be a heart attack, and then after the funeral home's secretary tells her another Mrs. Kratke has been making a fuss, claiming she was married to Robert. To make matters worse, Eliza discovers her finances are in shambles; Robert left her nothing but debt. Devastated, she retreats to her bed and stays there for weeks. When a collection agency tries to repossess the car, she manages to hold them off and sell it. She tries to sell the house, too, but finds a lien has been placed against it by the other Mrs. Kratke, so she rents it out, moves into a cheap hotel, and enrolls in a business course. The classroom is chock-full of colorful characters, including an artist who makes counterfeit money and a gay man who offers to help Eliza land a secretary job. Though the detours into these characters' lives makes the novel feel a bit scattered, Sandlin manages to evoke Eliza's can-do spirit as she perseveres through one challenge after another. This tale of redemption will move readers. Agent: Jennifer Thompson, Nordlyset Literary. (Dec.)
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Thompson, Jennifer. "Sweet Vidalia." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 38, 7 Oct. 2024, p. 119. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A812513473/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=6f708a4b. Accessed 8 Jan. 2025.
Sandlin, Lisa SWEET VIDALIA Little, Brown (Fiction None) $28.00 12, 3 ISBN: 9780316578004
A recent widow copes with a surprising new life in Sandlin's buoyant latest, set in 1964 in a small Texas town.
When railroad man Robert Kratke unexpectedly dies of a heart attack, Eliza, his wife of 30 years, discovers that he had been living a double life, with another wife and family on the other side of town, and that the savings she thought they had have vanished. Reluctant to burden her children by moving in with them, she rents out their house--which she can't sell, because the other wife has put a lien on it--and moves into an efficiency in the Sweet Vidalia Residence Inn, a motel populated mostly by students and others in their early 20s. With no work experience and three years before she will be eligible for her husband's Social Security benefits, she enrolls in business school and finds she has an aptitude for the material. As she gets to know her neighbors and fellow students and finds an unlikely business opportunity, she evolves from a "preparer" who "dislike[s] suspense" to someone who's delighted to realize that her "life is lively." Despite a somewhat erratic plot, in which Sandlin introduces new characters and dilemmas at a brisk pace without resolving all of them, the novel has a nostalgic charm, and it's impossible not to cheer for Eliza and the members of her motley tribe. Sandlin tempers the more melodramatic elements with quirky humor, and she has a gift for summing up a character in a sentence or two, like the classmate with "doll-baby eyelashes" and a "contrary laugh, made up of malice and merriness." Fans of Anne Tyler should be happy to greet Sandlin as a Texan cousin.
A novel that endearingly proves it's never to too late to come of age.
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"Sandlin, Lisa: SWEET VIDALIA." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A811898554/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f42099f1. Accessed 8 Jan. 2025.