Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues
answers to some of his questions, he is left with new ones. In the end, though, he is on his way to recognizing a new identity and new place in the world. The Dark of the Island can be overly complicated at points, but its core themes of allegiance to family, place, country, and community
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will resonate with readers. The mystery keeps the plot moving, and several of the characters are vividly drawn. Gerard is at his best writing scenes that bring his characters to moments of crisis, whether they occur on a torpedoed ship in the Pacific Ocean or in the dark of night on the Hatteras Island beach. n
for the Land of the Longleaf Pine and all of its people, and who with her life’s work has proven it magnificently. My friends, as its most honorable next witness, the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame calls 2016 inductee Margaret Maron. n
PHOTOGRAPH BY ALICE OSBORN
is so close and so varied in its dramatic depictions of the real that the sitting Secretary of State tells newcomers the best and quickest way to get to know North Carolina is to read our contemporary native writers, starting with Margaret Maron’s Deborah Knott series. While trying to see and cipher her way through the perplexities of the case at hand, Judge Knott often turns her gaze upon herself, in internal dialogues and weighings not between an angel and a devil but between portions of herself she calls “the preacher” and “the pragmatist” as in this moment from Southern Discomfort (second in the series): As Tracy laid out the charges, Jerry Dexter Trogden drummed his fingers on the tabletop before him and kept a sneer on his face. “That sneer could be a mask of apprehension,” the preacher reminded me. “Yeah,” agreed the pragmatist. “Fear that he’s finally going to get what’s coming to him.” “You are honor-bound to listen to both sides before you judge.” “Fine with me. Give the bastard enough rope so we can hang him in good conscience.”*
Margaret Maron’s dedication to Sand Sharks (the one about district court judges at Wrightsville Beach) reads: “To North Carolina, which has given me more than I can ever repay.” If it please the court, the state begs to differ, for Ms. Maron’s ledger in this province shows a great credit, one comprising neither quick dimes nor slow dollars but rather the full faith and gratitude of our people. What a great honor and pleasure it is for me to present to you one who, though known widely as a Sister in Crime, in fact has a perfectly unblemished heart, one full of affection and deep, abiding, empathetic love
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Margaret Maron, Southern Discomfort (New York: Warner, 1994) 196.
ABOVE Margaret Maron speaking at the 2016 North Carolina
Literary Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Weymouth Center, Southern Pines, 16 Oct. 2016