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Lunch with the Do-Nothings at the Tammy Dinette
By Killian B. Brewer
Interlude Press, 2017
Four stars

When you don’t fit in with the family God gave you, you go make your own.

Marcus Sumter is on the run, but this time he has a place in mind. Marathon, Georgia, is a small town with not much going on; but it might have the key to Marcus’s freedom.

This wry, cozy, very southern story is all about the search for belonging when you’ve been raised not to belong anywhere. The trick that Kilian Brewer has pulled off so neatly here is to present a bit of small-town America at its best—welcoming, accepting, irritating. Marathon is full of quirky characters and interfering old ladies. But, most importantly, it is full of the milk of human kindness, which is something of which Marcus has had precious little experience in his relatively short life.

Clearly the author writes from his own experience and his own heart, and we can only believe in his rosy vision of life in a small Georgia town. There is nothing really surprising in this romantic folk tale, but it warms us and enfolds us its embrace. How can one resist?