A Glooming Peace This Morning.

Book Review

My Memories are of memories, and they also of memories, and reality is at the end of a long chain of contemplation that leads to nowhere and nothing.

- Allen Mendenhall, A Glooming Peace This Morning

Allen Mendenhall’s A Glooming Peace This Morning is a beautifully crafted, philosophically resonant tale, narrated through the eyes of Cephas, a young boy on the cusp of manhood. Mendenhall delivers a coming-of-age story that feels both timeless and refreshingly original, with prose that echoes the finest of Southern literature. The spirit of Faulkner and O’Connor pervades every page. Yet, Mendenhall’s distinct voice shines brightest, offering a work that could easily become a classic of Southern literature for a new generation.

This novel captures the essence of the last summer—the pivotal season when life insists we set aside childish things. Set in the 1970s in the fictional Magnolia County, Alabama, Mendenhall perfectly evokes what it means to be a boy inching toward manhood. As I worked my way through the novel, I was taken back to forgotten memories—moments like seeing a woman as a woman for the first time, taking the first sip of alcohol, and the world-crushing feeling of recognizing for the first moment that our parents are human and flawed. Mendenhall masterfully portrays the gradual awakening that reveals the world’s complexities through tragedy and triumph.

The sights, sounds, and emotions of young boyhood leap off the page, transporting readers to that awkward, transitional summer when everything changes. Amidst Cephas’s journey, Mendenhall brings small-town Alabama to life—a close-knit community where rumors and legends thrive, and time is of secondary importance.

I won’t provide a full synopsis, as A Glooming Peace This Morning deserves to unfold as it does for its protagonist. Like Cephas, the reader should experience the blind optimism of youth crashing into the brutality of fate.

-TJS

You can find the novel linked here A Glooming Peace This Morning