Having been impressed by A Parchment of Leaves, I was keen to try another Silas House novel, and when I got back to DC, I found several in the Martin Luther King Jr Library. Southernmost begins with a flood in a small town in Tennessee, where our protagonist, Asher Sharp, is an evangelical pastor. He rescues his mother-in-law, Zelda, then when his 10-year-old son, Justin, finds other victims of the flood, Asher’s attempt to rescue them too, brings him in contact with 2 gay men, ostracised by his community and church. Even in this emergency situation, Asher’s wife, Lydia, will not house the 2 gay men for the night, because of their sexuality and because of her interpretation of her faith. It is this incident that triggers the breakup between the couple.
Asher, brought up in a very rigid faith which does not accept homosexuality, was also brought up by a mother who rejected her own son, Luke, Asher’s elder brother, for being gay. Asher lost Luke because
I reacted the way I’d been raised to: I called him an abomination. Being afraid of somebody who’s different’ll make an awful meanness come over you. I said a lot of things I’m ashamed of now.
p74
When Luke discloses to his mother and brother than he is gay, his mother puts a gun to Luke’s head – unloaded though, as she pointed out later. Luke leaves his home and family forever right after that. Asher, however, felt brainwashed by his mother after Luke left; she convinces him his brother no longer cared about them.
He [Asher] loved her even after she had pulled a gun on his own brother” (p132); his mother convinced Asher she was trying to save Luke’s soul from hellfire. Asher knows there is a lot wrong with his mother’s faith and judgemental attitude, but instead of telling her, “he prayed with her. And in that way she had made him feel loved for awhile.
p132
Asher even becomes a pastor to please his mother.
By the time he had figured out that she had God and judgement all mixed up he had been preaching along those same lines for years.
p132
The novel introduces us to Asher at a pivotal point in his life, when he suddenly does a U-turn on everything he has done and held sacred in his life. He suddenly is unable to pray, he realises he does not wish to condemn gay people and exhorts his church to accept the 2 gay men who want to worship – for which he gets thrown out of his own church by a vote of deacons. He loses his livelihood, and he breaks up his marriage, because he realises he cannot stay married to Lydia, whose faith is as his was before his epiphanies. Lydia refuses to change her outlook or her stance.
And then he had begun to realize that he had married a woman who did not disagree with her [Asher’s mother], who was not unlike her, except for the abuse. […] At least she didn’t possess that kind of meanness.
p132
After Asher leaves his home and marriage, Lydia fights him for custody of Justin, and wins. Asher is devastated as he is extremely attached to his son. In his desperation, he breaks the law to snatch his own child and go on the run. The plotline then turns to their fleeing Tennessee and going to The Keys, where Asher hopes he might find Luke. Although the novel is told in a very matter of fact manner, it actually contains a remarkable tale of how an evangelical preacher suddenly renounces his own faith just by realising it was mean spirited for persecuting others for being different, and without a second thought, throws away his entire life, family, community, livelihood, in that renunciation. It is heroic even if not presented as such, and almost unthinkable.
The character of Justin, the small-framed 9-year-old really comes into his own in the second half of the novel, and becomes a remarkably endearing and delightful character. Old for his age, wise and compassionate beyond his years, Justin is so completely without artifices and pretences – on the cusp of that age there is self awareness, but just before adolescence when identities will need to be negotiated and facades be put up, when approaching adulthood will leach away fearless sincerities – that he quite steals the show, vying for chief protagonist position alongside Asher. The relationship between father and son is one of the charms of this book, for sure. It is a straightforward book, with a simple plotline, and just a handful of characters, but well told, a read both easy and engaging, and one which lingers in the memory.
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