Madison Jones, A Buried Land (1963)

In 1963, in The Habit of Being, which is a collection of letters written by Flannery O'Connor and edited by Sally Fitzgerald, O'Connor writes to Betty Hester: 'Right now I'm trying to get Madison Jones' [A Buried Land] read.* It is a shame about his books. They are excellent and fall like lead clear out of sight the minute they are published.'

This time I agree with O'Connor: A Buried Land is indeed excellent. Its genesis is a melding of two things: Jones's deep concern about the flooding of huge areas of Tennessee and northern Alabama by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and a story Jones heard about a young woman dying after an abortion.

The novel, once more, is about a good man corrupted by evil. Gradually unfolding events inevitably lead to Percy's undoing, and the novel almost reads like a thriller, or a kind of detective story, even a Greek tragedy. The cerebral young Percy has an alter ego, his physically-oriented friend Jesse, who tempts him to have sex with Cora, a simple girl originally from the mountains. She dies shortly after a botched abortion in Nashville, and Percy and Jesse bury her in a graveyard now evacuated before the TVA floods the area and buries the past. Unlike the rest of his family, who think the TVA are virtual robbers, Percy supports newness. However, despite his job as a lawyer several years later and his potential rosy prospects, his past actions will come back to torment and haunt him in the shape of Fowler, Cora's brutal and relentlessly vengeful brother, and the impoverished Jesse, who clings to a past Percy hopelessly wishes were forgotten.

The final paragraph on the front flap reads:

'Madison Jones turns the screws of suspense very tight in this powerful book. Youngblood is a modern Raskolnikov, whose struggle against himself is no less desperate than his conflict with his unnerving pursuer.'

A remarkable book.

*Betty Hester is known as 'A' in The Habit of Being, and was a Georgian who corresponded with O'Connor between 1955 and 1964. Their letters total almost 300.