Welcome to the website of S.M.Fernand,
author of the novel,
Appalachian Carnival
Appalachian Carnival transports us to May Day, 1970, as Annabelle Cory—a comely nineteen-year-old, disheartened with her West Virginia coal-town prospects—flirts with Walt Ryder, who runs a game in a carnival and wins a date with her after the show closes. Until then, she wanders McCain’s Magic Midway, taking in some sideshows, playing a few games, and riding the wheel. A three-armed man reads her Tarot—mysterious cards with images that eerily mirror her circumstances. Later that night at a club in town, Walt and Annabelle eat, drink, and talk. He makes much of his life on the road, and she confesses her yen for somewhere else. Abandoning caution for a chance at adventure and romance, she goes with him to his hotel bed, and the next night she leaves home with Walt and the carnival.
Narrating her tale of the following week, Annabelle’s voice is laced with hillbilly dialect and carny jargon, yet it is also woven with language begotten from her love of reading. Her love for Walt takes wing amid blind lust, but shortly spirals in and out of her confused heart. She follows him through the day-to-day world of a traveling carnival—a realm of sideshow freaks, alibi agents, ride jockeys, kootch dancers, flat stores, and hanky-pank joints—a world within a world. Assuming that he has won Annabelle, Walt then turns his eyes to other contests: his morning game shows on TV; his daily business of bamboozling locals with softballs and peach baskets; his nightly gambling at blackjack, poker, or dice. Money is the other prize he desires—but at what price? Annabelle also needs to win some money. For until she does, she’s at the mercy of Walt’s world.
Working a hoop-toss game for Walt’s boss, Nickel Nick, Annabelle encounters a bizarre cast of carny characters. She befriends Isis, a tattooed bearded lady, who gives her a booklet that she wrote, spelling out Isis’ heretical notions. She coaxes Annabelle to seek her essential self, warning her of pitfalls in the quest. Trips, the three-armed man, and Isis’ beau, deals out poker, Tarot cards, and Jungian opinions. Madeline, who works her father’s wheel of chance on the midway, also befriends Annabelle, and invites her along on an LSD trip. Cheeks, a fat fellow who owns the Frog-Baby sideshow, parties heartily and doles out blackjack, moonshine, and psychedelics in his motel room. Bad-Eye Mike, in a razzle joint next to Annabelle’s hoop toss, cheats a local rube out of his paycheck, and when the rube vents his rage at Annabelle, Walt coldcocks him with a hammer, starting a feud that just won’t quit.
S.M.Fernand sets his first novel to correspond with the procession of the Tarot Trumps, said by some to be a scenario of the human soul. At the beginning of each chapter—each recounting one day of ten with Walt and the carnival—is an image from the first ten cards of the Major Arcana, along with a paragraph interpreting it. Within each chapter/day, various aspects of a card’s symbolism are explored—and thus, on another level, the tale becomes an allegory of archetypes. It is also the age-old story of the struggle for love, the search for oneself, the pursuit of money, and the domination of a society over an individual. It documents a time when carnival con men were in cahoots with the local sheriff, a time when outlawed drugs were used to explore the mysteries of reality. Our heroine, Annabelle, seeking her liberation amid a caravan of devils, rolls the dice to win a ride on the wheel of fortune, and finds herself awakening within the soul of all.
Appalachian Carnival presently is unpublished. Submissions of the manuscript to publishers have recently been made by Sullivan Maxx Literary Agency.
Editors can contact Melissa Lee:
melissa.lee@sullivanmaxx.com
