The Gone Dead audiobook

The Gone Dead by Chanelle Benz is a 2019 Ecco publication. Race related crimes from the past continue to painfully haunt those living in the present in this tense and timely southern mystery. This is a short novel, but it still packs a punch. The story is centered around Billie James, a young woman who inherited some money and a run down, barely habitable home in Mississippi. Upon arrival, Billie hopes she can learn more about her father, who had been a renowned black poet. But her inquiries are met with a slew of roadblocks as nearly everyone seems to be warning her off. Although Billie was around when her father died, a death ruled an accident, she was only four years old and has no memory of that night. However, an odd bit of information causes her to dig her heels in and double down, more determined than ever to find out the truth about her father’s death, despite the possibility it could put her in grave danger. I nearly read this book in one sitting. Partly is was the brevity of the book, which weighs in at less than three hundred pages in length, but mostly, it was because of the mystery and the superb characterizations. Yes, there is a big cast of characters, which does require some concentration, but I didn't find it as distracting as I normally do. The old house, the secrets it holds, the racial history in Mississippi and the multiple points of view kept me turning pages as the sins of the past finally comes to light. The portrait of a rural small southern town is captured perfectly and examines the class and race divides that have barely budged in all the years since the death of Billie’s father. Thought provoking and very timely- After all is said and done, the reader experiences things through Billie’s eyes, learning simultaneously that injustice lingers forever, and that the past is never truly buried, and it’s never really all that far from the surface- and it should never be forgotten…

fulfilling my 2021 goal to read one ARC each month i'd been so excited to get my hands on and then...never readthis first novel is a little bit rickety in its construction, but there's no damn doubt that chanelle benz can set a scene:Billie gets out and tours the parking lot. Each tenant has distinguished their room by the way that they cover the long window beside their front door. Some are sealed tight with tin foil, others with a printed sheet, but her uncle's window on the second floor is bare. A few people are sitting outside of their doors on plastic chairs. Nothing moves except for a can or cigarette. The light from passing cars gives their faces the sheen of old masters paintings. Hendrick ter Brugghen's Melancholia. The contemplation and the shadows. Nothing is happening but a wanting something to happen.when the grandmother she barely knew dies, bequeathing her some money, a dog named rufus and the thirty-years-abandoned home in greendale, mississippi where her father once lived, billie james leaves philadelphia and heads for her father's hometown in the mississippi delta and the house she now owns, where she will confront her past and learn the truth about her father's death. billie's mother, a white medieval studies scholar named pia, died of cancer when billie was nineteen, and her father, a black poet/activist named cliff, died when she was four. when her parents got married in 1970, interracial marriages were uncommon (and still illegal in mississippi), and her mother understood the particular challenges billie would face as a mixed-race individual, telling her "You'll never be white enough or black enough for some people."their marriage was short-lived, and when they separated, her father returned to greendale. four-year-old billie had been visiting him when he died, although she remembers very little from that time. her mother whisked her away before the funeral, and she has had little contact with his side of the family since then, and only foggy memories of the south. during her stay, she visits her uncle dee, reconnects with her cousin lola, and meets some of her father's old acquaintances, from whom she learns that not only was she there the night he was found in his yard with his head bashed in, but she had been reported missing following the discovery of his body."I'm sorry. I don't want to hurt you. But I do wish I knew more of what happened. What he was doing out there, what I was doing."He looks at her. "You don't remember nothing?"She shrugs. "I was asleep, I guess."He bends forward, rubbing his temples. "Well, baby, you in the right place 'cause nobody round here remembers anything either."a big truth statement, although for many of the locals, forgetting the details concerning a black man's death has been a somewhat deliberate choice. going through her father's things, billie discovers the second chapter of an unpublished memoir her father had apparently been writing about his time as a freedom rider during the civil rights movement, which, along with her questions about her own disappearance, leads her into an investigation into the circumstances of her father's death, ruled a drunken accident. in this endeavor, she is accompanied by dr. melvin hurley, a black studies scholar who is writing a biography about billie's father. local law enforcement aren't too keen when these outsiders start sniffing around for answers; and scrutiny about a black man's death stirs up all the southern discomfort around race, history, and slavery. the weight of the past is a particularly fraught burden 'round mississippi, as lola reminds billie:“You're definitely not gonna be living here full-time, right? You don’t want to be hanging around with folks still mad they lost the Civil War.” Billie almost spits out her whiskey. “Oh my God.” “Girl, I’m serious...It's like this: white people have invented their fears about us and tried their damn best to make them true, but our fears about white people have always been real. White people have always had conspiracy theories about black people, because you can't trust the people you're trying to hold down."the past can be too close for comfort, coupled as it is with the inescapable interconnectedness of small southern towns, and lola cautions billie about the squickiness of her interest in her neighbor harlan, whose family and billie's have a complicated history going back generations: "Billie, you don't want to get with the great-great-grandson of the man who raped your great-great-grandmother.lola is the verybest character. the multiplicity of POVs allow for a broad range of perspectives on cliff's death and the town's racial climate, historically and presently. melvin's perspective, as a northern outsider, is particularly memorable: He will of course be told that he is not from around here. It happens multiple times whenever he visits. Embedded in this phrase is not so much a reference to his accent or his (cosmopolitan) wit, but to his unexpected lack of deference. The way in which his posture does not ask if his body is allowed to take up its space. Or sometimes, in more casual interactions, they'll say You don't see color. The utter irony of this has always struck him, as he told his partner last night on the phone. On a certain level it seems like the only way they can explain him is to imagine he is safe from being reminded at any moment of the weight of his color—little peltings he calls them—like being hit with rotten eggs when he didn't even know he was onstage. Even now, even now in his early fifties, these small displays of hostility have the ability to take him by surprise. He still finds himself asking if it is really happening. Did that flight attendant really ignore him? Did that white woman really clutch her purse and cross the street? Did that cabbie really stop and take one look at him then drive away?like her short story collection, The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead, there's some excellent writing here, but it's got some first-novel flaws—more character POVs than are necessary (there are NINE! and one is a building), a perfunctory romance subplot, and some darlings that needed killing, but for me, the big one was an underdeveloped central character; billie is fairly undefined, so her late-novel shift in behavior reads a bit unconvincing. still and all, the awkward bits are more to do with construction and development than writing chops, and hers are more than strong enough to carry the novel, which has a satisfying, unexpected conclusion, and i'm anticipating her next novel with extreme pleasure. come to my blog!!

The Southern mystery with a strong sense of place is not a new genre, but it is a mostly white one. It's wonderful to see Chanelle Benz join the field with THE GONE DEAD, which feels like it belongs with other Mississippi-set modern work from writers like Jesmyn Ward and Kiese Laymon. Most would probably classify this as a "literary" crime novel, it has a slow pace and no big payoff, but once you get past the first few chapters it's quite addictive.Billie James had an unusual childhood, taken from place to place by her white mother. Her black father was a poet who died when Billie was a toddler, after her parents had already split up. After her mother's death, Billie finds herself the newest owner of her father's old "house" in Mississippi. She decides to take a break from her life in Philadelphia to move in and get to know the place. But early on she learns that her father's past there is full of questions she didn't know existed. His death, it turns out, was under suspicious circumstances no one will talk about. And soon Billie hears that she herself was there when it happened and was missing for a time. The novel grows as it expands into a multiple point-of-view story, with both insiders and outsiders, black and white, taking their part in Billie's search for the truth. I enjoyed the ability of the book (and the always-fabulous audiobook reader Bahni Turpin!) to present a variety of voices that felt very distinct, quite rare for a first novel. The climax is rushed and it feels as though several threads are left hanging, but I loved the sense of place and history Benz brought to the story and I'd love to see more from her and more crime novels like this one.

Full review to follow.

Chanelle Benz is a literary acrobat. Her writing style can be blunt or flowery. The prose flowed beautifully and this book was perfectly paced, quick to read, easy to understand, while still playing with words and colloquialism. Knowing Benz from her short fiction, I had no idea for about half the book which way things were going to go. But then it got predictable. The final half of the book, the reader knows what happened, can easily guess what is going to happen, but I believe this is the point of the book. Benz is discussing racism in the deep south. It is something predictable that hasn't changed much for so many years. The payoff of the book is not the event or discovery of the event, but something a bit more deeper-seated, a new realization.Benz is discussing people struggling with where they came from and ever returning back to. This is not a trite tale of white people hurting black people. It is a story that researches how we deal with the injustices and hate of the past and the present, and how we approach the future.

I DNF'd a mystery before I picked up this book which the F2F mystery group that I attend will be discussing in March. So I wasn't in an especially tolerant mood, but was nevertheless soon immersed in the story of Billie James, the female protagonist of The Gone Dead. This isn't a fast paced mystery, but the Mississippi milieu, the provocative themes and the character relationships kept me reading.Billie won't give up until she learns what really happened to her father in 1972. She gradually learns the tragic truth which reveals how much hasn't changed in the small Mississippi town where she was born. This turned out to be a powerful novel despite the numerous POVs.I recently criticized a highly respected book because there was no justice in the resolution. That was also the case here. The difference is that there is no suggestion in The Gone Dead that the lack of justice is at all OK. I felt that the author was deliberately provoking anger in her readers, and that it was righteous anger.

A slowly unwinding Southern mystery, I enjoyed The Gone Dead quite a bit - with some caveats. Benz’s story - Billie, in her 30s, inherits the house where her father died and she went briefly missing when she was four, and starts barking up the wrong white-supremacist tree as comes to believe her fathers death was not an accident and searches for the truth - was strong, as was the character development; I found myself really rooting for Billie and I loved most of the supporting characters (especially Carlotta who I wish we got more of). That said, I found Benz’s writing style to be at times kind of...forced? Strange? For instance, Billie’s deodorant came up at least three or four times in ways that really stuck out to me but not because they were adding anything to the plot. We get it, Mississippi is hot, Billie is sweating. I fell fully into the story of Billie’s father Cliff, a black poet and anti-segregation activist, to be beautiful and captivating - I wanted to learn more about him and wished more of the book were dedicated to telling his story. I also ultimately found the climax and resolution to feel a bit rushed after the preceding 90% of the novel moved at a relatively slow pace (befitting a Mississippi summer). I liked the story but overall the book left me wanting more; The Gone Dead would have benefitted from being longer in order to really give the characters and the themes of racism, segregation, violence, and the cost of ruthless white supremacy in the South room to be more fully fleshed out. Thanks to Netgalley and Harper Collins for the ARC. I’m looking forward to reading more from Chanelle Benz in the future after this solid freshman novel.