Allen Mendenhall’s debut novel, “A Glooming Peace this Morning,” is an eloquent, powerful novel about confused youth, a tragically mismatched romance, a courtroom trial, and the culture of small-town Alabama in the 1970s.

It is told in the voice of a mature man looking back upon events in his youth. The narrator, called Cephas after his boyhood nickname, has not entirely made peace with what happened back then, and he may not understand it fully either. Mendenhall fuses Cephas’s adult’s reflections with his youthful confusion and angst quite compellingly in remarkably evocative prose that is sure to have an impact on readers of this story.

The title comes from William Shakespear’s “Romeo and Juliet,” which of course is a big hint about the story in which the town’s favorite daughter, a barely teenaged Sarah, and a mentally handicapped older teen much in the role of the village idiot, Tommy, strike up a relationship against all odds. They are drawn together when others forsake Sarah due to her mysterious illness, but Tommy draws closer to her, unafraid of catching this strange sickness like the others.

The narrator of the story, Cephas—like most of the town’s young men—was in love with (or fancied himself so) with the enigmatic Sarah. Motivated by unrequited love and jealousy and other perhaps unknowable, confused motives, he and his friend set in play what will only evolve into a tragedy.

It's been two weeks since I finished reading this absorbing novel, and it haunts me still. There is a good deal of philosophy in this tale, and the writing is refined, educated, often lyrical, and rather masterful throughout. Mendenhall captures the culture of small-town Alabama wonderfully well and accurately.
I received and read an advanced readers copy from NetGalley and these are my honest opinions.

The above is from my Amazon review. I will also have a longer review and an interview with Allen Mendenhall at Southern Literary Review.