Despite being used and abused by the adults in her life from an early age, and still at the mercy of friends and acquaintances who do not have her best interests at heart, Dee Dee remains naively optimistic and determined to use the skills she learned in a state-sponsored intervention program called Rainbow Farm to make something of her life.
An unexpected sort of friendship is born.ĭee Dee Mullins hails from the mountains of North Carolina. Dee Dee's gentle sweetness calms and enthralls Susan, and Herb is overcome with gratitude. And when a young manicurist shows up at his door to give Susan a pedicure, he is charmed by her way with his wife. He "hates everybody that's young, everybody that's having fun." But he does have a heart. Present-day Herb is gruff, stubborn, rude, profane and perpetually angry. Herb is frustrated and overwhelmed by his wife's constant care needs and his own failing health, and so spends much of his time dreaming of the past, especially of simpler times with his first wife, Roxana, beginning with their shared childhood in Buffalo. Herb Atlas is an 83-year-old millionaire who lives in a pink, tropical-themed mansion in Key West with his beloved third wife, Susan, the victim of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. But her ability to spin tragedy into comedy is challenged as never before in her new novel, "Silver Alert," as a motley cast of characters navigates a world filled with cruelty, pain and loss, while at least one stubbornly clings to her hope for a better future. Her characters are prone to shocking weaknesses, outlandish excesses and questionable decision-making, which makes readers love and root for them all the more. Lee Smith has a knack for mining the chaos and pathos of everyday life for rich veins of broad humor. "SILVER ALERT" by Lee Smith (Algonquin Books, 224 pages, $27).
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