Published Fall 2021
By Vailes Shepperd
A Good Ending for Bad Memories is a richly sensual novel about a prosperous African American family before, during, and after slavery. It threads truth, folklore, legend, and fact, in a captivating exploration of a family’s complex legacy. The plot frames their experiences and events in Egypt, Mexico, as well as in the United States, much of it through Mother who exhibits her multiple personalities, and whose children revolve around this mystery with wonder and devotion.
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Please see my blog “Dear Reader” before reading.
Book Summary
In the 1860s, Lloyd Earl was an African American entrepreneur disguised as an enslaved carpenter who traveled nationwide with freedom papers forged by his own hand. Collector of the “comebacks,” Lloyd Earl built the first Negro Kitchen Library in the USA. His family and others like it were found on a list called The Curiously Successful Negro. A list kept in secret for more than a 100 years by Harvard University!
Selsie, his wife, a slave known as Two for the Price of One, suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder, unnamed and undiagnosed at the time. In her small town, everyone knew Selsie. When she was limping and cooking, her potatoes were to die for. When she was smiling, her biscuits were dangerous.
From the soon to be bestselling author Vailes Shepperd comes A Good Ending for Bad Memories (Bold Story Press, October 1, 2021) This story begins in 1958, when the first African American attaché and his family are posted to Cairo, Egypt. Perfect for his wife, “Mother,” an undiagnosed moody beauty with four distinct personalities of her own. Freed from the day-to-day responsibility of caring for her husband and three children, Mother spends her time sifting through memory in search of the roots and cause of her disease which lie deep within the family's past.
Mother’s grandmother and great grandmother murdered the men who attempted to take family property. Great Grandmother Selsie poisoned the pudding and hid the evidence among her four personalities. Mother has inherited Selsie’s recipes and her disease.
After their term in Cairo, the family returns stateside to Washington, DC, business carries their father to Mexico and Mother joins him, abandoning their son and two daughters to finish raising themselves and safeguard their property.
Twenty years later, a handsome stranger knocks on the door. The sisters jump to the conclusion that their parents have redeemed themselves by specially selecting and sending a husband. Each daughter wants the young man for herself until he makes his claim, which unites them. Together, they compose and execute a plan to rid the house of unwelcome company and keep what they know is rightfully theirs.
Like Selsie before her, Mother never stops trying to determine what tore her apart in the first place and what might put her back together again. But the price of healing may be too costly?
Testimonials
“A Good Ending for Bad Memories is a book unlike any you’ve ever read. Joye Shepperd threads folklore, fairy tale, legend and myth, while entering the interior psychosis of “character.” The plot frames black experiences and events in foreign countries, as well as the United States, with a family whose mother exhibits multiple personalities, and whose children revolve around this mystery with wonder and devotion. The plot is lyrically elevated, maintained by prose that is nothing less than exquisite. Shifting psychological realities with African American narratives, Shepperd creates the most original and bold reading you will encounter. Every page is fired with musical cadence and highly imagined words – “balloon brother,” “shut up cake “— in a world that could only be written by someone who didn’t care who was watching—too immersed spinning her characters into intriguing actions, holograms, and dreams. There’s much to admire in this richly sensual and poetic writing, and even more to love. Take this book to your leisure and do not read quickly. Then you will want to begin again.”
“What an absolute delight! The last line (in the first chapter) that she had 4 separate personalities to prove it, made me laugh out loud. And the tone is just great –we really love these people. Oh yes, people are going to be turning pages!”
“I didn’t want this book to end. The story complex and beautiful. The insight into family relationships and history masterful. But mostly, the writing was pure art. As I looked over all of the books I’ve read through the past few years, this book reminded me of why I love reading.”
Jane Miyahara
“There aren't many books whose reading I savored enough to let them wash over me slowly (that includes John Crowley, Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez). I paused many times so it would not end too soon. I enjoyed this book in many ways. The multiple-personalities of the protagonist and her family and its history--which found ways to survive and thrive while caught up in a mythical/magical history amidst the brutal background of slavery and the century of its aftermath. The exquisite writing that caused me to catch my breath and linger over sentences and phrases that struck me with images evoked and envy at the ability to assemble words to arouse them. I highly recommend this book. I am giving it to friends who I know will appreciate it, and I look forward to what this author has to offer next.”
Steve Shannon
I just finished your novel. Wow, where to start? You've offered a lot of literary innovation by getting rid of the traditional plot and creating characters who are living in different time periods at once. It's a fever dream and a haunting; people, places, and experiences get refracted into smaller worlds; and yet, unlike other hauntings, this story isn't an invitation to death but rather to life. It's happy! These characters, despite their difficulties, are triumphant. What an interesting twist. What a nice way to see ourselves and our foremothers -- not as defective or broken or beyond normalcy, but as works in progress.
I appreciated your metaphor of bodies as memories. They can be buried, forgotten, dug up, rearranged, remembered or changed. They can be moved around. They take up space, and no matter where you put them, they eventually call out to be honoured. Mrs. Thrace is a living body of memories; memory split across multiple bodies. (And I just loved Berdeena.)
But Agnes is more than her personalities. She's also her mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother, Selsie. It's this aspect of the story that most demanded my attention but that was also most rewarding. Mrs. Thrace might live with other women inside of her, but she also lives with the three generations of women who preceded her. She lives with all of their ghosts and personalities and secrets and abilities. It's so beautifully crowded, so vibrantly peopled.
It was cool to see Mirella and Alley grow into older, eccentric Auntie Em's and Auntie El's. They, too, house "multitudes within" because of their experiences with history and also because of their loses and the way they heal themselves through their bond with each other. The digging of the hole at the end was hysterical and also strangely happy. It reminded me, there, of Practical Magic, a movie that I SO loved in my youth.
I feel a little shy or perhaps unqualified to weigh in on what this book says and adds to the literature reflecting on African American culture, particularly vis-s-vis the harsh legacy of slavery in the United States. I will say that your take is very deeply felt and completely fresh. Resentment and anguish are expected and accepted. Yet that's not what you offer. The characters in this story are taking on both American and international culture as the strong and equal people they know themselves to be. Permission is not being asked; they simply assume their rightful and powerful places. This is important not only for its empowering message, but because it offers another way to be. Multi-racial societies will also want to put people in boxes, with as few alternatives as possible. As in, for instance, wanting to project a singular African American experience as "inner city" or "single mom" or "poverty." This is a reality for many, but it's not the only game in town. It's about time the American public was offered another version.
We can always seize and own the narrative that's been written for us by others. For this reason, this passage made me shed some tears:
"Your ancestors were slaves!" Daphne said.
"Of course they were," answered Mirella, quite profoundly. "The past is part of the whole that makes us. If you love yourself, and you must, love your history too."
Bravo,
Dorothy Reno, Author, Viet Nam