Is he rich? A drunk? Is he a man of the people or an elitist? And, what about riding toward the sun? Is he a comet blazing toward oblivion, or is he a phoenix or some latter day Natty Bumppo fleeing encroaching civilization? Near the end his mother is talking to Wood as they look at graffiti on his father's grave stone. "Don't you get it? That's not the monument. . . You're the monument." His great friend Jeter described Wood as having "the unremitting sadness of a man in a coma, lying next to a treasure [his wife Milan]."
The "prince of Paris," as his mother calls Dr. Woodrow McIlmore, is the golden son of his father. Both are archetypal country doctors, but Wood becomes so much more. He has married his childhood sweetheart, Milan Lanier, who comes from the far side of the tracks. We know they married because she was pregnant, but it is not until the end of the novel that we learn the full circumstances of their agreeing to marry and the resulting implications for both their lives. Milan (Yes, she was named after the city by her dirt-poor family), a woman who is always dressed perfectly, seems a stereotype of the social doyenne of small towns, but she is so much more.
Thomason has written a novel of great beauty and complexity. Liberating Paris provides a good story in the best tradition of Southern storytellers. The descriptions of the setting and characters are richly and fully realized and memorable. These are indeed "rural Southerners that were intelligent, educated people with an interest in social tolerance."
Thomason has written a novel of great beauty and complexity. Liberating Paris provides a good story in the best tradition of Southern storytellers. The descriptions of the setting and characters are richly and fully realized and memorable. These are indeed "rural Southerners that were intelligent, educated people with an interest in social tolerance."
