Explosive start leads to rich irony and compassion

“We need a story that starts with an earthquake and works up to a climax.”

That was the droll advice of film producer Samuel Goldwyn for writing a blockbuster.

Sweet Vidalia starts explosively, but what impresses most is how the author then changes key and shifts the narrative to a forensically-observed chamber piece.

In the first chapter of Lisa Sandlin’s novel, which opens in Texas in 1964, Robert Kratke is about to tell his wife, Eliza, a profound secret when he is pulverised by a heart attack (“There’s a hammer in my back and in my front”).

Rushing Robert to the hospital in their car, Eliza has an altercation with the police and her husband is dead by the time they get there. 

But her pain is soon supercharged: Eliza discovers that while married…