Author: Susan BeckhamZurenda

Publisher; Mercer University Press

ISBN: 978-088146-737-6

We meet Adeline (Delia) Green in August 1975 as she visits the Green Branch Town Cemetery where she meets the town historian who is leading a group of DAR ladies. Delia's family were founding members of Green Branch, the small South Carolina town in which Delia, 19, grew up. She is seven months older than her first cousin Ellison (Eli) Winfield who lives right across the street. Bells for Eli is the story of Delia and Eli's childhood and youth in Green Branch.

The author, Susan Beckham Zurenda, taught literature, composition, and creative writing to high school students for 33 years, which may explain the polish and authority of her first novel. During her years of teaching at Spartanburg Community College and then as an AP English teacher at Spartanburg High School, Susan published short stories and won numerous regional awards such as the South Carolina Fiction Prize (twice), the Porter Fleming Competition, The Southern Writers Symposium Emerging Writers Fiction Contest, The Hub City Hardegree Contest in Fiction, Alabama Conclave First Novel Chapter Contest, and The Jubilee Writing Competition (twice). She received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in English from Converse College and now works as a book publicist managing media relations for Magic Time Literary Publicity.

Bells for Eli really begins when three-year-old Eli spots a Coke bottle in which his father has stored Red Devil Liquid Lye and drinks from it. The family's black gardener saves Eli's life, but Eli's throat and esophagus are horribly burned. He spends six months in a Boston hospital and when he comes home he has a hole in his neck so he can breath and a port to his stomach so he can be fed pureed mush.

Delia tells the story of growing up with Eli who, though terribly scarred internally, is eventually able to breath and eat normally. The author conveys what it was like to grow up in small town South Carolina during the 1960s and early 1970s given the the characters and their situation: Delia's uncle Gene, Eli's father, a Southern good-old-boy who wants a manly son . . . her aunt Mary Lily, who comes from the side of the family that kept their money . . . Eli's grandmother Mary Margaret who lives in a mansion Sherman's troops tried to burn down but was saved . . . plus Delia's parents, neighborhood bullies, boy friends, and more. 

And running through the book is the love between Delia and Eli, an attraction that evolves from childhood playmate to something more adult. As first cousins, however, they know they cannot marry, and the author convincingly relates how the tension between desire and inhibition affects (distorts?) the decisions—choices—Delia and Eli make. 

I was struck by how well Zurenda writes without drawing attention to the language. Here's Delia watching Eli being dragged into the house by his father after sassing his mother: "I had no concept of the beating that awaited Eli. the most I ever got was a couple of pops on the bottom with Mama's green hairbrush. My father's hand had spanked me only once. When I lied to him about emptying green peas from my plate—I detested them—being the kitchen door next to my seat at the dining table. I insisted Helen had pitched the peas. I was spanked for lying, for blaming my sister, not for hating peas." Five sentences that say volumes about the family dynamics.

And here is Delia's description of her grandmother Mary Margaret's pre-war (pre-Civil War) house: "We stepped inside the entry hall, wider than any room in my house. I inhaled the rich, sweet, old wood smell. A leaded glass fixture overhead dimly illuminated dark furniture: the mahogany table, its ever-present candy dish filled to the top, the Regency side chairs and the hall tree. People long dead inside golden frames peered out straight-faced from the right wall—flanking the family shield and crossed swords—following us with their eyes. The stairs rose along the other side."

Bells for Eli is, indeed, as one early reader says, "a memorable, atmospheric novel of love, friendship, and bonds that surpass all reason." I couldn't have said it better myself, so I won't.