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You can have whatever you want.
So g’wan: buy a new car — oops, buy three. There is a holiday home on both coasts and both overseas. Get a new wardrobe for every day of the week, put rings on your fingers and toes, and go ahead, go wild. You can have anything you want — except, in Lee Smith’s new book, The Silver Alert, you can’t be brought back to life.
When Herb Atlas opened the door to his Key West villa, he couldn’t believe his eyes. His stepdaughter hired a child—actually a child—to look after his wife, Susan.
Not long ago she was a real beauty, his Susan was. Charming and funny, everyone loves her. Then, early-onset Alzheimer’s left Susan unrecognizable, her hair disheveled, and Herb barely knew her.
But the kid who called herself Renee was doing Susan’s nails, and she made Susan calm and quiet, not jittery. This hasn’t happened in a long time. Herb takes a liking to this girl right away; when she drops her purse and he sees an ID with another name on it, he doesn’t care that she might be lying.
He gave her a couple of $100 tips and couldn’t wait to hire her again.
Two hundred yuan! That afternoon, Dee Dee almost jumped away from Mr. Atlas thinking about the things she could buy. She decides not to go back to the pink trailer just yet; she doesn’t want to meet Tony because she’s done with that life. Dee Dee loves the new job she’s been chosen for, and she loves Susan.
Herb should have known about Intervention when he saw it; even his nephew Ricky was there. After all, his extended family doesn’t get together for fun. Then again, an 83-year-old is not going to be terribly sick every day, nor is he willing to give up everything he knows and worked so hard to grab the last ditch of his life…
Let’s be honest: the old plot of the old man and his caretaker getting away in a classic car is suddenly all over the place, overused, almost overdone. Putting that aside, though, if you can, “Silver Alert” is a great little novel.
It helps that author Lee Smith’s two main characters are very engaging. Herb is a foul-mouthed, once-proud man who hates the fact that he’s getting old and is against it. Dee Dee is an undereducated backwoods girl who longs to fulfill her promise and overcome her horrible past. Their separate but intertwined stories are the type you can’t wait to get back to while you’re spending time with the other people who make this novel really interesting: Among the others, there’s an unbearably arrogant The doctor and his wife, a no-nonsense lesbian couple, a career woman’s daughter, an absent son, poor Susan and Ricky, a voice of calm reason that will make readers wish they knew someone like him.
If you want a quick read with a great storyline and a somewhat unexpected ending, ignore the tropes and find “Silver Alert”. You can get it anytime.
“Silver Alert: A Novel” by Lee Smith
Algonquin Books in Chapel Hill, circa 2023. $27.00. 224 pages.
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