Hideaway

A riveting series of fiction based on the mythical town called Hideaway.Betteen, now in her 60s, sits down to tell the visitor about the secret town called Hideaway. Its legendary orgins are linked to namesake Cecil Hideaway, a church, and four houses on each side of a mythical Mama tree. Surrounding that landscape are 13 engaging chronicles-filled with beauty and darkness-about the neighbors' domestic encounters, spiritual upheavals, and unexpected violence. Speaking in the plain and non-standard English of regular Southern folk, Betteen describes the characters and events of her Hideaway with language that features idiomatic phrases and pronunciations that are magnetically engaging. In fact, her voice is as riveting as the events themselves and are a special treasure for readers. In her marvelous character portraits, her stylistic dependence on the gnomic tradition gives her narrative a voice quality that corresponds with classic black fiction like Jean Toomer's Cane and Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard. At then end, with the dramatic dissolution of her relationship with Randell, she leaves listeners with a profoundly spiritual lesson about how a neighborhood can represent through both beauty and darkness, the fears, comedy, and tragedies that we all must face. She ends with, "He gave us what we needed every day in a secret place called Hideaway."