Review 59: White Lightning Road by Harry E. Gilleland, Jr.

White Lightning Road
Harry E. Gilleland, Jr.
Copyright: © 2006
$13.75 Paperback
$5.37 E-Book
192 Pages
ISBN: 9781411686939

While I’ve never been a fan of Valentine’s Day, February wouldn’t be complete here at LLBR without at least recognizing some sort of book in the romance genre.  I searched no further than my very own bookshelf and found a book that a Lulu author had actually sent to me.  The blurb on the back begins…”This is a story of romance set in rural northern Louisiana.”  That’s good enough for me!

Death and loss. Romance and new beginnings. Marriage and children. Backwoods ways and Southern city flare. Mysteries and murderers.  There is a little bit of everything in Harry Gilleland’s White Lightning Road. The book is divided into two parts and traces the lives of two close friends after their recent marital hardships.  At only 178 pages of story and 31 fast paced short chapters, I couldn’t put this book down.  I actually finished it in 2 days…a record time for me!

Jenny James returns home to her parents’ house on White Lightning Road outside of Ruston in Northern Louisiana.  She was a city girl at heart, going to school in Baton Rouge and living in New Orleans, escaping the simple down home woods where her parents prefer to live.  It is so “down home” that the closest store is a gas station/grocery store/bait shop run by a gossip hound appropriately named Bubba.  Unfortunately, Jenny’s parents have both recently passed away after a tragic accident involving a drunk driver, and Jenny has come to put their estate in order…the house, 180 acres of land, a boat, a car, and a nice fat savings all willed to her.  Unbeknownst to Jenny, a murderer is lurking in the woods and watching.

Michael Garrott, a rugged hunter and the town outcast, soon comes knocking to tell Jenny that her father promised he’d sell his house and land to Michael if something ever happened.  Michael lost his own wife and child to a drunk driver a while back, and the guilty man responsible spent less than a year in jail for it.  He was later found shot dead on the highway, and Michael has been accused of revengeful murder ever since although he has always claimed he’s innocent.  It’s those rumors that make Jenny fearful of Michael and she tells him she has no plans to sell the house to him anytime soon.

When her beloved dog Maxx is found mutilated in the woods, Jenny calls the cops and blames Michael.  But Michael has found tracks in the woods indicating a mountain lion could be near.  With hunters scoping the woods and noises in the garage, Jenny grows fearful and turns to Michael for protection.  The chapter culminates with a steamy love scene that had me blushing.  But when Jenny finds a stuffed mountain lion in Michael’s trophy room along with a Rolex watch hanging on the wall, her original premonitions of Michael come flooding back.  She’s convinced he is a murderer and that he faked the tracks in the woods as a cover.

Jenny turns to her best friend Sally who has also returned to town.  Sally, in and out of marriage and toting around a toddler, is not without drama herself.  But when homeland security agents show up at Jenny’s house asking her to stay close to Michael and act as a “spy” for them, Jenny grows curious again and also develops true feelings for Michael despite any danger and what the town has to say about him.  Looking past the rumors to probe for the truth, Jenny’s life takes a 360 as she drops her defenses and lets her heart guide her.

The last ten chapters of the book follow Sally as she relocates to Atlanta, deals with a sexual harassment charge at work, and searches for love again.  It’s a rushed sequence of events that would have worked better had Gilleland weaved it into the main chain of events rather than sticking it on the end.  Once Jenny had found her happy ending and the curtain closed on her climatically, I didn’t really care about Sally at that point and her story was a bit uneventful for me.

Despite some formatting issues with the manuscript and some dialogue that was not too believable at times, Gilleland held my attention enough with his Southern love story of new beginnings.  There’s enough mystery and intrigue to keep you guessing, and a nice dash of sex and romance to make your own heart flutter (I actually wouldn’t have minded a bit more it). A visit down White Lightning Road is well worth the trip.

Happy Valentine’s Day!