“LOVE AND HOT CHICKEN” by Mary Liza Hartong (William Morrow, 272 pages, $30).
Mary Liza Hartong makes her debut as a romance writer with Love and Hot Chicken, a queer Southern novel set in the small West Tennessee town of Pennywhistle. Filled to the brim with quirky characters with even quirkier names, the novel offers plenty of love from the start, but it starts off on a sad note as the main character, PJ Spoon, is on her way home from Nashville to be with her mother after the unexpected death of her father.
PJ Spoon grew up like many children in the South with loving and encouraging parents who took her fishing, taught her to hunt, and were very involved with their softball team. PJ’s mother, despite her small stature, made great strides in the community by baking pies, distributing newsletters, and—most recently—starting a petition against the tampon tax. PJ’s father, on the other hand, was more laid back. A local firefighter, he spent as much time as possible being the best husband and father he could be. When he dies unexpectedly, PJ and her mother’s world is turned upside down, and it is the generosity of their trusted Pennywhistle community that helps them find their way again.
Hartong’s writing style is entirely in the Southern dialect, with PJ often using creative comparisons and metaphors. Her description of Tennessee is a perfect example:
“Tennessee is long but narrow, so it’s only a couple of hours from here to Nashville, past XXX billboards and blown-out tires. Damn, it’s a beautiful drive. The radio was nothing but Jimmy Buffett and Jesus. When I was growing up, every summer we went to Lee Ray’s Aunt June’s, a psychic ventriloquist with half a dozen friends and a pet snake.”
Lee Ray is PJ’s childhood friend and most important confidant. Seeing Lee Ray is one of the highlights of the trip home from her Ph.D. program at Vanderbilt University, a program she’s considering abandoning. At first she goes back to Pennywhistle to attend her father’s funeral and comfort her mother, but soon she’s renting a small cottage and applying for a job as a fry cook at the local Chickie Shak. As the smell of grease seeps deeper into her pores, college life seems like a fever dream, unattainable and, in retrospect, even silly.
Unable to deal with grief, PJ becomes increasingly withdrawn into herself, and not even her mother or Lee Ray can stop her. However, PJ falls in love with fellow Chickie Shak member Boof, a mysterious woman about PJ’s age who recently moved to Pennywhistle from Texas. As the two grow closer, PJ realizes that she doesn’t know as much about Pennywhistle and its residents as she first thought. As PJ finds out more about Boof, she also learns more about others in town and even about herself.
When one day the owner of the Chickie Shak chain, Mr. Puddin, walks in with a whole camera crew and announces a nationwide beauty pageant for all female Chickie Shak employees, the smooth teamwork of Boof, PJ and the older employee Linda suddenly changes: For Linda it becomes an “every woman for herself” scenario, while PJ, who without her father and biggest believer just wanted to keep her head down and drown in her loss of identity, finds herself in a confusing situation.
Over the course of the beauty pageant, PJ gets to know Boof as more than just a co-worker, learns surprising truths about her mother, and helps Lee Ray reconnect with his ex-boyfriend. She is amazed at how much love still surrounds her and renews her efforts to be the best daughter, friend, girlfriend, and – maybe – graduate student she can be.
Hartong’s writing style — with colloquial gems like “jorts” (like jean shorts), “shoo-ee,” “hullabaloo,” and lines like “pennywhistle is deep and flat like mom’s butt” — is a real joy. Her storytelling makes the Southerner in me homesick, and as a reader, I’m glad to see more authentic Southern queer romance novels like Hartong’s on the shelves.
For more local book reviews, visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.
William Morrow / “Love and Hot Chicken”