Hunk City - Softcover

James Wilcox is the author of eight novels. The director of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University, he was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Wilcox, director of Louisiana State University's creative writing program, has set most of his novels in the small fictional town of Tula Springs, Louisiana. His newest work not only is set there but also features some of the characters originally introduced by Wilcox in his hilarious first novel, Modern Baptists (1983), which is listed in Harold Bloom's The Western Canon (1994). Burma Van Buren, assistant manager of Redds Dollar Store and heir to her late husband's $35 million fortune, is having a terrible time figuring out which organizations most deserve her contribution. She's a die-hard liberal, much to the consternation of her corrupt Republican accountant and her feisty gun-toting mother. Meanwhile, her love life is nonexistent: her handsome landscaper is gay, and her lifelong love, Mr. Pickens, is still married to a scheming Evangelical. In this gentle, madcap comedy, Wilcox effortlessly conveys the charm of southern eccentrics while preaching a subversive message of tolerance. The novel's dizzy, riotously funny final courtroom scene, which brings the warring factions together, is a near perfect piece of comic writing. Joanne Wilkinson
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