A Little God of Snow: The Hissy Fit Code

This novel, A Little God of Snow – The Hissy Fit Code, begins in 1945 in Oliver’s Branch, a small Mississippi town sleeping its way through World War II like a cottonmouth napping in the sun. Angela Evelyn Oliver, the heroine, is a 17-year-old would-be poet. Angela, who is snippy, snobbish and arrogant, falls in love with two young men, Derek Rosetti and Roger Ames. Derek, an artist, is a U.S. Marine wounded during the war on Iwo Jima. He is the town madam’s illegitimate son, and that makes him lower than slime on the southern social scene. Roger is a naval officer and a family member of the Establishment. Marsha Landsdale, a blonde, blue-eye southern belle, is drop-dead gorgeous. She has a limited vocabulary and the IQ of a turnip, but men don’t care. Marsha is in love with Roger. Do men fight over Marsha? “Fighting over me is part of the basic training at Camp Shelby,” Marsha says. “I’ve sent more men into combat than the U.S. Army.” Angela, the heroine, muses, “When men are around Marsha, they’re always smiling, but when they’re with me, they’re clutching their brows in agony or taking a stiff drink. I guess I’m more of a gong than a belle.” Angela modestly describes herself to Derek as La Belle Dame Sans Merci – the “lady without mercy” – who drives men mad. Derek says, “Angela, you don’t drive men mad, you make them mad. There’s a difference.” After much ado about mating, the novel wends its weary way into Book Two. It’s 1963. Civil rights. COFO – the Council of Federated Organizations created by civil rights activists. The KKK – the Ku Klux Klan, a group that asserts white supremacy. Demonstrations. Upper class white ladies determined that integration must come into being without bloodshed. The novel is wordy in the tradition of Fanny Trollope and the Bronte sisters. The 432-page, hard cover book is buckram bound and smyth-sewn on acid-free paper.