"The first day of autumn brought the fever,
and with the fever came the voices."
"Missouri, 1955. Loretta Davenport has led an isolated
life as a young mother and a wife to Pete, an ambitious assistant professor at
a Bible college. They’re the picture of domestic tranquillity—until a local
girl is murdered and Loretta begins receiving messages from beyond. Pete
dismisses them as delusions of a fevered female imagination. Loretta knows
they’re real—and frightening. Defying Pete’s demands, Loretta finds an
encouraging supporter in parapsychologist Dr. Curtis Hansen. He sees a woman
with a rare gift, more blessing than curse. With Dr. Hansen’s help, Loretta’s
life opens up to an empowering new purpose. But for Pete, the God-fearing image
he’s worked so hard to cultivate is under threat. No longer in control of his
dutiful wife, he sees the Devil at work. As Loretta’s powers grow stronger and
the pleading spirits beckon, Pete is determined to deliver his wife from evil.
To solve the mysteries of the dead, Loretta must first save herself."
Ultimately, for me, The Devil and Mrs.
Davenport by Paulette Kennedy misses what first drew me to the book – the idea
of ghosts and the dead communicating with the living. Instead, Kennedy borrows heavily
from Stephen King, as Loretta is seemly a collection of his magical kids. She’s
Carrie White, she’s Danny Torrance, she’s The Dead Zone’s Johnny Smith –with a
little bit of IT and every small town with it’s dark underbelly.
Then there is the fact that Kennedy uses the lens
of 2024 to look back at 1955. Now I’m not saying people like ‘Retta or her
abusive husband did not exist then, but we get a classroom lesson of how much
women were prisoners of their marriage – the only thing they could obtain back
then. And Pete, oh irredeemable Pete, is much like my grandfather was –but without
the religious overtones. He too forbade my grandmother from learning to drive,
and when she “got out of line”, she learned to shut up. For me, it’s sad to
know that I think my grandmother only learned to live in the decade between his
death and hers. Only ten years of her eighty-six on the planet were given to doing what
she wanted to do, with her own ideas and opinions.
Still, Loretta comes off as a woman who, like Calare
Randall in the Outland series, somehow transported back in time so she can
point out all the inequalities of women were forced into. It’s an education, I
guess, but one most people probably already knew.
And poor Pete, who is immediately seen as the villain
(might’ve had a Las Vegas sign hanging above his head that Kennedy constantly
wants the reader to know). Pete is a teacher’s assistant at a Bible college
trying to achieve tenure and when Loretta tells Pete of her dreams, the voice
that led her to tell the police where the body of Darcy Hayes would be found,
he is horrified (and a reminder of why I don’t believe in this stuff):
“Voices? You didn’t tell me you were hearing voices.” Pete stared at her, his eyes widening. He sat up, fumbled on the nightstand for his glasses. “That’s not prophecy. Or of a God. It’s delusional, Loretta. You’ve heard people give a word of prophecy in church. If it’s real prophecy from the Holy Spirit, it’s always given in tongues first, and then an interpreter translates for the congregation, It’s for the edification of the faith. What you’re talking about…is…well. It’s not the same thing. At all.”
So yeah, as early as page twenty-one, I knew how this was going to end. And there is no real devil, with the exception of Loretta’s husband. Metaphors, catch them.
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