Florida author of 'Night Letter' makes stop at Midtown Reader | Book Review

Florida author Sterling Watson proves once more that he is a master storyteller and an exemplary writer with his newest release, "Night Letter: A Novel" (Akashic Books 2023, $28.95). Tallahassee readers will have a chance to meet Watson and learn more about his new book from 7-8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2, when he will be appearing at Midtown Reader in conversation with Tallahassee author Marina Brown.

Watson’s "Night Letter" is set in the '60s in the Florida Panhandle, and the novel’s focus is on Travis Hollister, an 18-year-old youth just out of six years in a Nebraska reform school. A taut thriller with a noir gloss, "Night Letter" balances revenge with loyalty and violence with redemption to create an evocative coming-of-age tale. This is an excellent novel which Watson writes with a precision and eloquence befitting the best of literature.

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"Night Letter" is a sequel to Watson’s "Sweet Dream Baby" (2004), which first introduces Travis Hollister as a confused, naïve, and intense 12-year-old boy who spends an eventful, brutal summer with his grandparents and aunt in a small Florida town. "Night Letter" can certainly be read and understood without first reading "Sweet Dream Baby" but reading both books will result in far deeper insight into Travis.

In "Night Letter," Travis, is set loose after serving his sentence with only a set of clothes and a small amount of money. He’s been sent to reform school for a radical act of self-defense in his mid-western home, and he survived there by keeping his head low and building his physical strength — the latter will prove most valuable as the story advances.

Travis ultimately moves to Panama City, near where his father — a small town successful lawyer — lives. After finding work in a seafood restaurant as a bus boy, he rents a shabby efficiency at a tourist camp run by an alcoholic widow, and he becomes friends with Emil, the Black cook, and enemies with Jimmy, the dishwasher with Klan ties and attitudes.

All too soon Travis is caught in the net of a 16-year-old girl named Dawnell. Despite her hardscrabble life, Dawnell refuses to be trapped in the limited world of her poor and ignorant family, but she makes a terrible mistake in trying to find her way out of that life.

Her mistake will have repercussions that trap Travis and others into an expanding circle of jeopardy and violence. Travis will soon have his work cut out in protecting her — not just from Jimmy, but also from her father and brother. Travis must confront his own father. All these plot tangents move inexorably toward a brutal climax, with not one but two shocking twists.

Emil serves both as a well-drawn character to admire and a plot device to expose the precarious balance between danger and acceptance a Black man — even one as respected as Emil — walked in Florida. That his friendship with Travis is one of the catalysts for the violence that ensues is undeniable, but then Emil was always perilously situated in his time and place.

Watson, in discussing his characters in "Night Letter," said “They, like all of my central characters, begin the story with their backs against the wall.” He added, “I love them for their stubborn belief that things can get better and for the survival of love in their battered hearts.”

Watson, who is the author of 10 novels, including "The Committee," named as the 2021 Book of the Year by Southern Literary Review, sets all his novels in Florida, but not on the beach. “I placed 'Night Letter' on my native ground to continue to explore the themes that have always obsessed me: the redemptive power of love and friendship, the possibility of escape to a better place, and the impossibility of ever escaping the past,” Watson said.

Along with his novels, Watson’s short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous prestigious publications. He was the director of the creative writing program at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, for 20 years and now teaches at Lasell University in Massachusetts. He lives in Gulfport, Florida.

Watson is joined at Midtown Reader by Brown, an author, poet, former professional ballet dancer, an exhibiting watercolorist, a cellist, a bluewater sailor, and a traveler. The recipient of many awards, Brown’s name is a familiar byline in Florida as she’s written for newspapers and magazines for the last 20 years. She lives in Tallahassee.

Claire Hamner Matturro, a former lawyer and former legal writing instructor at Florida State University College of Law and author of eight novels, is an associate editor of The Southern Literary Review.

If you go

What: "Night Letter" author Sterling Watson conversation with Marina Brown

When: 7-8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2

Where: Midtown Reader, 1123 Thomasville Road

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Florida author Sterling Watson talks about new novel at Midtown Reader