Popular movie star David Lawrence has not spoken to his father in more than twenty years. When the old man has a heart attack while driving drunk and careens off the top of a parking garage, David goes home to the little bayou town of Freedom to be with his family while the old man hovers near death. While there, he falls in love with his old high school sweetheart, confronts a lifelong enemy (the local sheriff), and discovers that his beautiful adopted sister, Melissa, is not who he thinks she is.
A hurricane is heading toward Freedom and David’s obstinate old man, practically on his death bed, decides to throw a hurricane party and ride out the storm with friends. When the storm hits the Lawrence house is swept off its foundation and washed down the bayou with everyone trapped inside. It comes to rest against a pile of debris. Water fills the lower floor. David’s father and Melissa are trapped underwater, and it is David and his old enemy the sheriff who must save them, which they do -- barely. Afterwards they are all trapped in the house, and while confined together they confront each other with old hurts and long-buried secrets.
The Backside of Nowhere reveals the darker underbelly of a coastal town in Mississippi with outlandish characters including a movie star, gamblers and bootleggers and Ku KIlux Klanners all painted tongue-in-cheek.
Excerpt
David Lawrence’s many fans were surprised when he began
performing his monologue, Water, Water, which ran six months Off
Broadway before becoming a surprise hit on DVD. It showed that the
popular actor had a subtle and sardonic genius and a depth of feeling that
few fans and even fewer critics suspected. In his monologue, David
Lawrence rants, “You know what I love about being a movie star? The
money.” And then, after a wink and a dramatic pause, “You know what I
hate about it? Just about every damn thing else.”
The audience laughs. On cue or spontaneously, it’s hard to tell. Or
is it canned laughter? The camera zooms in for a close-up. David runs his
hand across his closely-cropped hair and says with a strong Southern
accent (just a trace of Cajun), “Jesus, man. If y’all think you’d like to be a
movie star, let me tell you, it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.” And he winks
wickedly at the camera while projected behind him are films of David with
his girlfriend, the actress Jasmine Jones. The obvious implication is that if
making it with Jasmine Jones is a fringe benefit of being a movie star, then
being a movie star is the greatest gig on earth, his protestations to the
contrary not withstanding.
The montage quickly flashes a love scene from their film The
Witness, followed by a photo of them speeding in his Jaguar and a blurred
shot of them skinny-dipping in the surf. David and Jasmine met on his first
picture, and the gossip rags have dogged their every move since. They’re
hot in the tabloids. They’re together, they’re not together, she’s moving in
with him, she wants to have his baby, they split up, he’s seen with another
hot young movie star, now they’re back together.
Professional Reviews
Going home again, through hell and high water
by D. Cloyce Smith
Up-and-coming movie star David Lawrence hasn't been home to Freedom, Mississippi, for two decades--and, on the rare occasion he calls his family, he can't even bring himself to talk to his overbearing father, one of more colorful local patriarchs. His hometown and its denizens have become for him little more than fodder for an off-Broadway one-man show.
But when Pop Lawrence has a heart attack while attempting a drunken daredevil stunt in a casino parking lot and makes national news with a spectacular made-for-TV car crash, David reluctantly heads back to the backwaters of Freedom--only to realize that there's some truth to the old saw that home is where the heart is. His sisters and mother, his high school sweetheart, and all his teenage rivalries lie in wait, threatening to turn his journey back home into a trip back in time. Memories are shared, secrets are revealed, friendships are rekindled, old feuds and old loves are resurrected--and the Lawrence family ultimately emerges from this reunion fewer in number but stronger than ever.
Although filled with distinctive, oversized characters, Clayton's fiction is far more Southern realist than Southern Gothic. His storytelling at times faintly echoes the nostalgia-laced prose of fellow Mississippian Eudora Welty but mixes in snappy dialogue, revelatory flashbacks, and episodic plotting, from the novel's opening car crash sequence to the near-cataclysmic closing scenes. With both drollness and melancholy, Clayton serves up a bravado performance, evoking a time and a place that ends up being somewhere after all.
Move over Pat Conroy. There's a new southern writer in town!
by Linda Linguvic
Set in a Gulf Coast town, this novel does more than just give us a story typical of the region. Yes, it includes high school romances, a competitive football game, corrupt political leaders and a devastating hurricane. And yes, it deals with the endemic racism inherent in such towns. But yet the story is so engrossing that I could not put the book down. I loved the characters, including a Hollywood star who comes home to visit his ailing father. Naturally, he meets up with his old-time girlfriend and they reignite their high school romance. We learn about his parents' background and his adopted sister with a secret. Then there is his sister who loves her hard drinking husband no matter how much he strays. All these characters came across as very real and there is a slight comic nature to the book which made it even more interesting to me and kept the story moving.
Frankly, I loved this book and actually found it better than Pat Conroy's latest, "South of Broad" because the characters seemed more real and not just stereotypes. Alec Clayton hit the mark perfectly, held my interest throughout and even surprised me at the end. Bravo! This is a really good book.
Alec Clayton's The Back Side of Nowhere
by Jack Butler
Think Carl Hiaasen crossed with, oh Walker Percy. This novel is funny, acutely observed, full of larger-than-life characters (if you're from the South, you'll probably think you know some of them), and alive with rollicking action. Take a lively bunch of ne'er-do-wells (but don't call them that to their faces), plus a few do-wells, including the local boy who's made it big and mocks his roots, stir in casual racism, wild misunderstanding, floods, storms, and other disasters human and natural, and this pocket of sea-coast Mississippi explodes into hilarious and vivid life.
Raised on Black and White TV is Carol Denise Mitchell’s intimate, unflinching memoir of growing up in a world where television became both a refuge and a mirror. Through the glow of classic black‑and‑white programs, she learned about fami
