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A Scarecrow's Bible
a novel by
Martin Hyatt
Praise for A Scarecrow's Bible
"Drugs, music, sexual discord, repressed memories and budding passion all form a grim backdrop to this Southern writer's slim, potent new novel, but they ultimately converge in a dark, haunting harmony.
"Life in a rural Mississippi 'house trailer' is no picnic for Gary, a carpenter, who finds himself stuck in a marriage that has seen better days, saddled with Gina, an aloof wife; and a daughter, Lula, whom he doubts is his (she's 'too big' to be his genetic offspring). Gary is closeted, and the only respite he gets is either from popping Valium (washed down with Jagermeister) or visiting a neighboring saloon called Jack's Place for some real living. It is here that he meets Zachary, 26, rail-thin and scarecrow-like, with whom Gary has a few things in common: namely, the reality-numbing effects of drugs and alcohol. Gary's memories of time served in Vietnam weigh heavily upon him in the same way that Zachary's abusive childhood does, and scenes of both nightmares are vividly outlined with great care by the author.
"When restless Lula heads for a 'bigger life' in the French Quarter, Gina decides she's had enough too, and tearfully leaves her husband for Eddie the cop. This opens the door for a drug-hazed reunion with Zachary, when Gary is in New Orleans visiting Lula. But this is no happy-ending fairytale. Trouble is brewing in Petulia, the small town Gary and Zachary eventually call home together, replete with a zombiesque populace that has turned into a virtual night-of-the-living-homophobes. Can love survive? Possibly not.
"There are no musclebound, drama-drenched beach bunnies spewing barbed one-liners in Hyatt's world. This is dark, seamy stuff that's written with an artist's eye for detail and real-life, believable situations: a work of intriguing and unique blue-collar fiction. We are thankful."
—Jim Piechota, Bay Area Reporter
"When wounded souls connect, the miracle can be explosive. So it is in this
rapturous debut novel, a tragic love story set in the hardscrabble
working-class Deep South. Gary is an emotional wreck of a Vietnam vet whose
daily existence--in a ramshackle trailer-park home shared with a distant
wife he wants to love, but can't--is tethered to hard drinking and
prescription drugs. Zachary is a defiant waif of a young man--skinny as
sin, ethereally handsome, and bedeviled by his own traumatic past--who
flirts foolishly with bigotry and hate by flaunting his queerness in the
unwelcoming rural Mississippi town they both call home. Their pairing is
certainly unlikely; one is a closeted older man not even sure he's queer,
the other a flamboyant younger man forever on the edge of flaming out. But
both of them are brutally scarred by life, and that's their bond. Their
romance is something haunting and precious, even though it's doomed and
desperate from the start. In Hyatt's skilled hand, it's also truly lyrical."
—Richard Labonte, Book Marks "Top Ten Books of 2006"
"Martin Hyatt's debut was a refreshing surprise and not at all what I had expected. A Scarecrow's Bible is a mature work that in no way hints that this is the author's first novel. Hyatt craftily avoids the inevitable pitfalls of the freshman. In a house trailer in rural Mississippi, Gary, a married Vietnam veteran, addicted to drugs, haunted by memories of the past, is on the brink of collapse. Just when he thinks the dream of another life is over, the unspeakable happens. He falls in love with a frail, ghostly younger man who reminds him of youth, beauty, and the possibility of a life beyond the prison he has created for himself. A Scarecrow's Bible centers on the moment when the universe gives you precisely what one needs at the moment one least expects it. His characters are subtle, but complex. Hyatt masterfully conveys their various (and at times inter-related) conflictions. He avoids didactic heavy-handedness, drawing his characters through action and interaction with the adeptness of a seasoned novelist. Kudos must also go out to Suspect Thoughts Press for finding another treasure in the American literary wilderness."
—Sven Davisson, Ashé! Journal
"At a conference of gay and lesbian writers held in the mid-1990s, I heard someone say that we had enough coming out stories. I sat there a bit stunned. True, many coming out stories exist, but it's also true that not everyone sees her or his life represented in fiction, which I remembered when I began Martin Hyatt's novel, A Scarecrow's Bible.
"Though the novel's protagonist, Gary, once dreamed of life in a New Orleans mansion, he has ended up in a house trailer in the deep South. He has dreams, fantasies, memories, and desires, but he keeps them hidden or squashed with drugs. It's a cloudy novel throughout, with Gary and others existing in a haze induced by alcohol and drugs, both prescription and not. Gary's life moves forward within this fog, leaving it tricky to determine whether he is a victim of fate or actively engaged in his life's progress. When a younger man, Zachary, enters the story, it's clear that Gary wants his life to change, but it's not clear what he really wants to do about it.
"Things change, and change is never easy. Early in the novel, Gary notes that everything seems off, that it feels like the clock on 60 Minutes ticks backwards. As things shift, there are moments when he feels it ticking forward, but it's difficult to believe that Gary will end up living the proverbial good life. Getting closer to the novel's end, I wondered if things would work out for him. I also wondered if such a thought was naïve.
"The writing style may throw some readers. The lack of contractions, for example, in some pivotal conversations creates an air of formality that seems unnecessary. From the start, however, readers will have to decide whether or not to embrace the narrative's point of view. The use of the second-person 'you' runs throughout the novel. For some readers, this may provide a way to connect more deeply to the story. For others, it will create distance, raising questions about both his passivity and his actions. If the reader being directly addressed would not do it, then why would Gary?
"Many readers, though, may find a lot they know in Gary. There are men like him out there, afraid to risk changing their familiar lives even if things feel wrong on so many levels. Gary's is a coming out story worth being told."
—Nels P. Highberg, Lambda Book Report
"Shell-shocked survivors find unexpected solace in A Scarecrow's Bible, an original and riveting work of modern fiction from first-time novelist Martin Hyatt. Vietnam veteran Gary Slope returned from the war a changed man, and the suffering caused by frighteningly vivid flashbacks and torturous hallucinations is made that much worse by a nearly debilitating addiction to prescription drugs and alcohol. With a grown daughter ready to leave the nest and an already-rocky marriage on the verge of collapse he can no longer deny where his true desires lie. And with the help of a much younger man Gary hopes to find much needed relief, if not emotional salvation.
"A masterfully written page-turner, A Scarecrow's Bible combines several styles and voices. Gary's struggles for personal happiness are echoed in those of his surprisingly well-suited soul mate, Zachary, whose own troubled history is revealed in an inventive way. By being unafraid of such literary and social taboos Hyatt tackles issues of homophobia and small town insularity with a brave and refreshingly honest perspective. His characters are both vibrant and true to life, and the readers will be hard pressed to put this spellbinding book down for more than a moment."
—Shawn Revelle, EXP Magazine
"'Then he takes the yellow tie and gently raises your head, putting the tie
around your neck. The soft silk makes you want his tongue all over you.'
"A Scarecrow's Bible is an engaging, sensual, powerful novel about two lost
souls that connect and collide.
"Gary, a tormented veteran with a penchant for self-destruction lives in a
trailer in Petulia, a rural southern town. The open spaces around Petulia
include the field across the highway from Gary¹s trailer. It is where a
scarecrow resides. Where, in its own uncanny but inanimate way, it observes
and reflects Gary's life, a life filled with secrets and desires.
"But Gary finds someone to ignite hope in the form of twenty-six year old
Zachary, who is described as 'a gorgeousness of bones and messy blonde
hair.' Zachary, too, is damaged, having returned to Petulia after a series
of austere incidents and relationships in New York. Gary is drawn to the
field, the scarecrow, and to Zachary.
"'You turn to him, wanting every bone of his to belong to only you and him.
He looks puffy around the eyes, but they glisten, blinding you like the
earlier lightning.'
"A Scarecrow's Bible is a remarkable book. After only a few pages, the
concept and voice draws the reader in, and doesn't let go. Hyatt's eye is
analytic but delicate; erotic and beautiful. The author demonstrates a
controlled, unsentimental grace with his characters, but not without
compassion and candor. This unexpected story naked emotion is a must-read."
—Max Vicarro, Freshmen
"Although 50-ish construction worker Gary has a home in a battered trailer on the outskirts of Petulia, Mississippi, his heart is somewhere else. Still haunted by his experiences in the Vietnam War, Gary is devastated by what he sees around him; after all these years, the destruction of the war is almost impossible for him to fathom.
"Gina, his emotionally fraught wife, is having an affair, while his twenty-something daughter, Lulu, is about to pack up and leave for the bright lights of New Orleans. Existing only by shutting out the world, Gary turns to drink and drugs, spending his days downing vodka and prescription medications, choking on the memories and the way his place keeps changing shapes.
"Deeply closeted, Gary has spent much of his life struggling with his sexuality, haunted by the dreams of when was younger, mixing drinks and dancing seductively behind a bar, love coming his way in the forms of beautiful ones. Gary knows that he can't go back, so now he drinks alone at the kitchen table, 'knowing that all the bottles have run out.'
"One night at a local gay bar, Gary meets Zachary, a skinny, ghostly twenty-six year-old. With his crooked teeth and his obvious addiction to drugs, Gary spies a kindred spirit, a similarly troubled soul. The two eventually go home together, coiled in a type of shared intimacy.
"Gary, however, regrets that he has disappointed Gina again. Tired of her husband's drinking, Gina moves in with another man. For Gary, it's easier just to swallow the pills and hear the music no matter where it's coming from. Ironically though, it is in this time of great melancholy that Gary does try to embrace life once again.
"He asks Zachary to move in with him, much to the mortification of the townsfolk who are beginning to whisper and gossip about their relationship. When Gina discovers what her husband has done, she's disgusted, her small town bigotry and homophobia all too visible. Gary, however, sees it a second chance as the world he knows shifts beneath him and he begins to become wiser.
"In this deeply intuitive and exquisitely written novel, two very conflicted men find themselves in the heart of turmoil and a society that refuses to accept them for who and what they are. Tired of the constant 'rattrap of pain,' Gary and Zachary find tenderness in the midst of profound grief.
"Growing old, Gary sees that he has missed his chance at a love like Zachary. In his vibrant youth, maybe Gary could have been his lover. But he is no longer youthful, perhaps not even sane. On the other hand, Zachary is the lost puppy, the vulnerable soul and the disconsolate drifter who is desperate to be mothered and loved.
"Author Martin Hyatt beautifully traces Gary and Zachary's journey through the landscape of working class Mississippi, skillfully exploring their angst, grief and, ultimately, their doomed love.
"True love can turn up in the unlikeliest of places, but menace can also lurk just around the corner. These men are 'prisoners of war' lost in a cage of 'soft sighs and sharp images,' struggling to find hope in the face of impending danger."
—Michael Leonard, Curled Up With a Good Book
"Gary is a construction worker in a shanty town way down South where nobody ever admits to being gay. His only friend, like Gary himself a homosexual trapped in a loveless marriage, has put an end to his life in a shocking way, and this makes Gary think about how to proceed, for what's the point in living if you can't be who you really are? In Gary's case, this involves coming to terms with painful memories of service in the US forces in Vietnam, visions of which come to haunt him whenever he lets his guard down. To medicate himself, he does the Rush Limbaugh thing and has built a fragile mental economy on counter prescriptions, including heavy doses of Valium.
"I wondered if author Martin Hyatt hadn't originally written this book sometime back a decade ago, for to me it seems that Viet Nam vet Gary would be an older man than the vigorous, drugcrazed stripling we encounter in the pages of this book. How old are Viet Nam vets? Surely the youngest of them must be in their fifties? Oh well, the point is the same, for the Viet Nam material actually isn't all that compelling nor is it linked to the present day story in any meaningful way. However, it gives him something to be haunted by and that's what's significant to the plot.
"The story is told largely in the second person, with italicized third person sections describing the back story of Zachary, Gary's new love interest. Hyatt uses the second person beautifully, although from time to time he stumbles into the inevitable traps of that seductive way of writing, so that A Scarecrow's Bible tells the hero things he must already know, or if he doesn't, he's a dope, an effect which Leonard Cohen brought off in his song 'Suzanne,'-'And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind, and you think you maybe love her, for she's touched your perfect body with her mind.'
"In this story, it's scarecrow Zachary who's touched Gary's aging body, and not with his mind either, though both speak in lovely, elliptical, almost Biblical cadences, and it's not just the drugs, though both men are really, really drugged up in a way that Hyatt seems to link with being working class, though to my eye they seem more like the French symbolist duo Rimbaud and Verlaine. I found myself hoping that Gary and Gina would repair their tattered marriage, not a good thing in a book so plumb full of tragedy. An astounding debut with a sex scene so explosive my fingers still have burns on them.
—Kevin Killian, author of Shy
"'October is the time of year when you most feel yourself being pushed over the edge. This is home.' So begins Martin Hyatt's first novel, in which he uses the tricks of second-person narration to tell the story of Gary, a Vietnam veteran plagued by flashbacks, a dead-end marriage, and an addiction to mixing liquor and pills in order to not quite face the world. The eerie flatness of the narration perfectly suits Gary's hazy vision, which paradoxically serves to expose the artifice of everything else, particularly the third-person interior narration of Gary's love interest, Zachary, a boy 20 years his junior but already a fellow scarecrow in equally desperate circumstances.
"A Scarecrow's Bible is most effective where it reveals the horror of the mundane. Gary unapologetically compares the guilt he feels at leaving work early one day to 'the memory of shooting an Asian man somewhere between the eyes.' When a friend of Gary's, also a Vietnam veteran, leaps to his death from the roof of a Wal-Mart, Gary's wife is shocked that this suicide upsets him more than the departure of their daughter for the faggy French Quarter of New Orleans. When love for Zachary pulls Gary deeper into drugs but then out into an unfamiliar sobriety, he dares to hope that his flashbacks of Vietnam will someday stop but never that resolution could involve anything beyond erasure."
—mattilda, a.k.a. Matt Bernstein Sycamore, San Francisco Bay Guardian
"The characters in A Scarecrow's Bible are the kind of people novelists too often discard as insignificant and unworthy of our notice. In Martin Hyatt's compassionate hands they come fully to life in all their haunting despair."
—Jaime Manrique, author of Latin Moon in Manhattan
"Martin Hyatt's narrative tour de force takes us deep into the unchronicled heart of rural working-class gay life in the Deep South. Hyatt is a merciless, merciful storyteller, showing us the people sacrificed to bigotry, and those who snatched themselves, scarred and beautiful, out of its murderous jaws."
—Minnie Bruce Pratt, author of S/He
"The writing is so skillful it's hard to believe that this is a debut. If this is a gay novel it's unlike any other I've ever read."
—Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story
release: February 2006
fiction
softcover, 5X8
208 pages, $16.95
0-9763411-4-X
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