Steve Yarbrough The End of California

The End of California

Steve Yarbrough

Knopf, Jun 2006, $23.95

ISBN 1400044383

Twenty-five years ago Pete Barrington left Loring, Mississippi on a football scholarship to Fresno State vowing to never return to the small southern town. He successfully becomes a physician, marries a pretty woman and they have a teenage daughter as they live the good life in California. That is until sex scandals force him and his family to start anew in his hometown.

Alan Depoyster, manager of the local Piggly Wiggly, has always remained in Loring. The devout Christian is married and has a teenage child. He loathes Pete because back in high school, his mother and Pete had an affair that led to his father deserting the family. While Pete escaped Loring on a scholarship, Alan stayed home trapped by the broken family mess. Apparently Pete and his spouse failed to learn anything from their "eating out" in California as they continues with sexual predatory recklessness in Loring; this outrages Alan, who decides he must rid his hometown of these ten Commandment violators.

The key to this deep, tense yet sensitive character study is the cast, especially the rival males. Readers will understand what motivates Pete and Alan and to a lesser but critical degree their wives. The action comes to a boil slowly as Steve Yarbrough cleverly simmers the tension between families with a passionate heated mixing of obsessive sex and zealous religion.

Harriet Klausner