For more than 25 years, I’ve been reading the second draft of *most* of Kevin Winchester’s writing. Let’s be real…nobody gets to read anybody’s first draft. At Sunflower Dog’s inception, I knew it was special. I hope you, too, see its order, wrapped in wild abandon, and unspoken connection to the Universe…
In his debut novel, Sunflower Dog: Dancing the Flathead Shuffle, Kevin Winchester introduces a cast of misfits, each chasing his/her own version of the metaphorical “American Dream.” Winchester develops each character’s unique voice and twisted perspective of success in this Neo-Gothic Southern Tale. Plus, any novel beginning with a fight scene between two middle-aged women, one of whom has made a rather unfortunate wardrobe choice for the occasion, has this reader’s attention.
Sunflower Dog’s cast creates a holistic perspective of an iconic small, Southern town. Their archetypes and tropes are so intensely representative of this Southerner’s amalgamation of the New South, you’ll swear you know each of the people in Winchester’s plot.
Winchester’s seemingly disparate cast of Southern society’s broken outcasts and quirky oddballs come together in a traditional fight – what to do with and about the land. Each character is a tour de force propelling the plot line forward with expert use of point of view and a non-linear structure. Ethel, the antagonistic, pistol-packing, early-afternoon- drinking, cigarette-smoking grandma, whose story is built on decades of loss, suffering, and disappointment, makes her just one of Winchester’s driving forces. Then, there’s Kat, an amazingly competent research biologist at the local university trying desperately to navigate the pitfalls of academia, grants, and tenure. Plus, she’d like to, at some point, have a lasting relationship with someone of substance–someone different.
James and Brittany are created with push-and-pull brush strokes painting the New South: their struggle with their own youth and lack of experience and season remind us we all, at some point in our foolish youth, thought our grandparents were boring, had nothing to teach us, and really, could they just get on with it? Little did we (as sympathetic voyeurs breaking the fourth wall), or James and Brittany, realize those stories were our past, our history, and were cultivating our future on a land–a richness we could not fathom. Thankfully, James and Brittany, eventually, learn some lessons.
Or, consider Sally (Salvador) – he’s one auction away from nothing; a career, a lifetime really, of accomplishing nothing; Winchester’s anti-hero, for whom the reader simultaneously, yet reluctantly, roots for and admonishes. Finally, Liv (Livingstone), with all his obsessive neuroses, sets in motion a converging story line which changes the lives of this cast forever.
The eccentric troupe converges in a hallmark of Neo-Gothic Southern Literature, a sense of place so strong the land becomes a character itself. It is the land, its significance, its history, and its bounty bringing together these misfits. Winchester weaves together their individual threads to create the most beautiful, though eccentric, blanket, which undoubtedly represents a whole greater than its sum parts.
Winchester has a cultivated talent for Southern place and the idiosyncratic voices of the South. As a reader, you know these people. And, as a reader, you don’t want to forget them anytime soon. Plus, there is a dog, a little bit of VooDoo, and, of course, a love story, several in fact….
Kevin Winchester lives in North Carolina and holds an MFA from Queens University. His story, “Waiting on Something to Happen,” won the 2013 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize. Other works have appeared in Tin House, Gulf Coast, Barren Magazine, StorySouth Barrelhouse, Dead Mule, and the anthologies Everything But the Baby and Making Notes: Music of the Carolinas. His short story collection, Everybody’s Gotta Eat, was published in 2009. Sunflower Dog: Dancing the Flathead Shuffle is the Independent Publisher Book Awards 2020 Silver Award. He currently teaches writing at Wingate University.
Mrs. O. Says So... 