TEXAS BOOKSHELF: Three Perfect Men

The Bookshelf, The Parlor, The Young Texas Reader, and the Monthly

The Texas Bookshelf is different from the The Texas Parlor, http://texasparlor.blogspot.com/ . The Texas Parlor carries "general" bookish information and non-book information and even different Texana news and notes of use to the bibliographically challenged and other nosey folks intersted in historical, literary, and cultural observations. Will's Texana Monthly may carry material from either blog, but extends itself beyond those, especially for longer compilations or treatments. The Monthly, the Bookshelf and the Parlor are all companions. So, is the Young Texas Reader http://youngtexasreader.blogspot.com/ which specialized on books and such things for the youngest to the teenagers.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Three Perfect Men - Palfrey

Three Perfect Men. By Evelyn Palfrey. Austin: Moon Child Books, 1996, 4^th printing, 2004. 333 pages, trade paperback, ISBN 0-9654190-0-2, $12.95. http://www.evelynpalfrey.com/

Evelyn Palfrey, a successful novelist of Texarkana, writes as a middle-aged, ahem, "marvelously mature," observer of East Texas. Angela, a lawyer/analyst, has been done wrong by a man in Houston. Her best friends, Eleanor, an arch feminist/publisher and Sondra, a Judge and mother, swoop her off in the RV to a secluded lake for some days of quiet RR&R. But there are at least three men, Jones, Ike, and Donnell, there! But are they really perfect? But who cares, really?

A murder victim washes ashore. The usually self-contained women scream, shoot at the neighbors, drop lures and reject the men's lines and bobbers. The ensuing mystery provides a plot-line of small town politics and drug-trade, with twists and surprises, while the novelist performs the more intriguing task of revealing each of the sextet's personages, each with a secret wound only a true love can heal.

Three Perfect is the first of a trilogy of three college roommates, 25 years later. The next two are The Price of Passion, and Dangerous Dilemmas via Simon & Schuster. Palfrey's contribution to East Texana fiction draw from her nativity, SMU and UT Law School education, and, one presumes, some natural feminine wiles acquired by life. Readers beyond the Pine Pale will enjoy her tales representing a fuller range of life in the trees in this pluralist social ménage.