A review by ncrabb
Under a Dark Summer Sky by Vanessa Lafaye

4.0

I don’t read a great deal of historical fiction, but I’m glad I downloaded this. Of course, I knew nothing about a Labor Day hurricane in 1935 that obliterated pieces of Florida and killed a significant number of people. That storm was the perfect backdrop for this book. Lafaye’s writing style is stellar, and even if you are sick to death of books that focus on racism in the South during the depression, you need to push aside those personal strictures and read this.

Missy Douglas is a young black woman in a small Florida town in 1935. She is a maid and nanny to Nelson and Hilda Kincaid. The Kincaid marriage is an unhappy one indeed. He feels trapped by the fact that she became pregnant with their son prior to the marriage, and she has replaced his physical ardor with an intense love for food. Consequently, the beauty queen is now a plus-sized woman with a son and a philandering husband. Missy has long had feelings for Henry Roberts, who is a few years older than is she. He served in France in World War I, and he has come home a broken and changed man. He didn’t immediately return home after the war. Instead, he rattled around the country never feeling like he belonged anywhere. So different had the world been in an unsegregated France that coming home to a nation still impacted by the racist leadership of Woodrow Wilson—a nation that seemed to want to forget its returning veterans rather than pay them the bonuses they had earned in combat, was a huge adjustment for Henry and veterans in general. At length, Henry learns of actual work back in his hometown, and he sees that as a sign that it’s time to go home.

Henry and Missy are awkwardly reunited on the night of a Independence Day barbecue traditionally held in the community. There will inevitably be fights among the town’s black and white residents, and they will all carefully stay on their particular beaches. But the presence of more than 200 veterans who have come to build a bridge essentially at the behest of the Roosevelt administration significantly alter the dynamic of the town. When bad things happen or when things occur that are out of the ordinary, local residents are far too eager to blame the veterans. It doesn’t matter that Henry is someone native to the community. He has become one of the veterans held in suspicion by the town, and he will pay a price that should never be exacted of him. Lots of people at that party would love to bring Henry down a few pegs. He was an officer in the war, and now he’s working with disgruntled veterans who would rather be anywhere but where they are. Though the war is long over, the white enlisted men resent even the memory that a black officer would be in charge of them at any time. Worse still is a rampant rumor that Henry has fathered a child with a white woman—the wife of a local sheriff’s deputy. Naturally, the deputy wants to find a reason to get at Henry as well.

It is while the storms of racism brew and increase in intensity that another storm is born hundreds of miles out to sea. Racial tensions peak in the community when Hilda, deeply unhappy about the conduct of her husband at the Independence Day barbecue, determines to walk home without him. Later that evening, her battered and broken body is found alongside a road. It’s up to the town doctor to see whether he can patch her up or even keep her alive.

You will be immediately caught up in the lives of these people. The supporting characters are as compelling as the main characters, and like that deputy, you’ll wonder throughout the book who the real father of his child is, and some part of you won’t care.

The horrors of the hurricane, when it strikes, are grippingly told here, and there is another horror of equal or worse intensity that gets highlighted as well. I was sickened to read about the substandard housing the veterans were forced to live in while building that bridge. The rotting tents would in no way withstand even a moderate storm, let alone one of the most violent in the 20th century.