A Curious Matter of Men with Wings

By: F. Rutledge Hammes

Narrated by: Greg Lhamon

Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

The Walpole brothers take their little sister, Dew, out on a johnboat to pirate the waterways for beer and loose change. Dew falls overboard and appears to drown, until two men with gigantic wings swoop down and carry her body away into the sky.

The news of her disappearance hits the family hard, driving the mother to fashion wings so she can fly after the men who took her daughter. The Walpole boys set off in search of their little sister and discover love and the truth behind the centuries-old tale of the “Flying Men,” as well as numerous other mysteries native to the South Carolina Sea Islands.

©2018 F. Rutledge Hammes (P)2020 Southern Fried Karma, LLC

Couldn't stop listening

This book is masterful storytelling. It is compelling, intriguing, and full of wonderfully written imagery. The narration is beautiful. Cannot recommend this book enough!

FanTAStic!

I marvel at the mind that can conceive this story and then express it in such beautiful and eloquent prose. This is a story of life and love and searching for truth. Each new character is a surprising look into another’s perspective and journey.

Kudos to the narrator for his interpretation and execution. His performance made these people come alive and brought me to care about them!

I enjoyed listening to this beautifully written tale, so full of wonder.

Storm’s a brewin here. Evening storm after a powerful hot day. I’m sitting in my yard, all dark, wind tearing through the trees. Wind, so long absent for many a hot humid day, comes back home like a happy drunk returned from the bar late in the night. Loud, boisterous, but welcome nonetheless.

A dewey mist rides the unruly wind, landing pleasantly on my face and arms. Not so much to soak me, just cool me from the day’s heat.

It was in this moment, with the cool, wet wind rustling through the trees and bushes, that I sat, eyes closed, listening to the novel. The narrator’s voice conjuring characters and places and experiences foreign, yet somehow familiar to me. Weaving effortlessly through the tale like the very wind through the trees.

And like the passing storm, leaving me thirsty for more.

A Gullah Story

This book is very well done. (And, as audio book, it tells the story in a wonderful voice.) It is the story of the Walpole family, who are trying to live apart from society. The Walpoles choose to live in the Gullah country in South Carolina (more specifically, the coastal islands near Charleston). In the first few chapters of the book, the two Walpole brothers bring along their younger sister while they commit a (petty) armed robbery. In the course of the chaos, the younger sister dies – or at least seems to -- but that is just where the story begins. That evening of the girl’s death, two winged men -- angels, essentially -- appear and carry her away. In Gullah culture, winged men play an important role, born from the Gullah people’s history. For the balance of the book, the Walpoles try to grieve and try to understand what has happened. But this is all setup: there is so much more, and I will avoid spoiling Hammes’s plot.

The pacing and voice are first-rate. Hammes’s approach -- a Southern version of magical realism -- is beautiful. And plainly Hammes loves this corner of the world; he gives his characters dreams and frustrations and so much warmth.

I enjoyed listening to this book, but it is always slightly unsettling. So many questions. What do we believe? What do people do for hope at the most awful parts of life? What role do outsiders play in a community? Who gets to know about, and to talk about, a community’s secrets and its stories? (The story is scrubbed of most mentions of race -- intentionally so, it seems -- and it largely avoids confronting how history has shaped the Gullah world. Those ideas are mostly left for the listener to unpack.)

This book made me want to find more books about this part of the South.  I may look for more authors who can tell the story of the place, especially those with a different point of view. But Hammes’s book made me think, and it made me want more. I highly recommend it.