Thunder in the Heart

Thunder in the Heart (1954 edition)

By John Lee Weldon

I just finished a southern novel that pulled me into its unsettling 1930’s atmosphere. The author wrote the story in a semi-looking back style and it worked perfectly, revealing suspected secrets as it strolled along to its fulfilling conclusion. A love starved woman pleading for her married lover to stay, and giving all the reasons why, is the narrating voice that accompanies the drum march in "Thunder of the Heart."

What this - making of a prostitute - story shares is how incidents in an innocent young life can leave scars that never stop haunting, even into adulthood. It is what can happen when one holds onto a dream that in-reality was shattered many moons ago.

Listening to the young woman Zalphia at the end of the story think about love and the security of having her own man was kind of sad. You realize that she might have given in to the mental illness that caused her father to do what he did to become an unrecognizable victim of circumstance.

What made reading this novel so enjoyable, grabbing me completely, were the characters and the build-up of their explosive circumstances. The blowup was inevitable. Like watching two armies spending days preparing for the big battle that will leave some dead and many scarred and knowing that the survivors must somehow find a way to go on living with their scars.

Do I think this novel was too depressing for the average reader to enjoy? Perhaps, especially if the reader is looking for an escape from pressures in their own life. But to the credit of this novel, I think it brings a deep understanding and empathy to readers who have experienced enough life to recognize the pressuring circumstance of at least one of the characters. 

Whether you’ve known: a young person scared and confused by their homosexual feelings; a bitter, alcoholic mother unable to love a weakly perceived husband and jealous of her physically blooming daughter; a protective father trying to provide the best he can for his family without getting too caught up in their emotional needs; or a daughter who is at an age where nature is introducing her to the beauty of love while her home life has become an ugly battlefield with enemies and victims, this book shows us this and much more.

And then there is Whit, the young Mulatto field hand who’s innocence is what the tragic episode in this story turns on. His true love is the gold standard by which all other loves in the story appear cheap, childish and unrealistic in comparison. And yet he unknowingly marches onto the battlefield to become prey. Tragedies almost always require a sacrificial lamb.

I give Thunder of the Heart 5 out of 5 stars for its engaging and entertaining happenings. It’s not only a creatively written style of a story, but what it shares of human interactions  and needs carries a truth in it that is all too familiar.

Note: I was attracted to this book partly because of the eye-catching George Salter cover art of a red lip-sticked, hazel-eyed young woman with an odd gaze in her eyes and dreamy smirk on her lips. 

After finishing the book I have a theory on what the female cover image was meant to reveal to would be readers; the woman looking into the mirror that was described in the story as once belonging to Zalphia’s mother is the embodiment of all three family members (mother, father, brother). There’s as much male facial features as female hidden in the portrait. On the outside there’s the appearance of innocent beauty; but you can see just below the surface a seductively, sinister and disturbing thing that seems out of touch with reality. I wanna say that Zalphia, who seemed to be the most normal and level headed of the family throughout most of the story, became the dreamy, haunted and unhinged byproduct of her disturbed family members. And all any of them really wanted was to be loved. 

What a price innocence must pay in life when searching just to be loved.