THE TUCKED AWAY SECRET:

LOCAL AUTHOR PUBLISHES FIRST BOOK

Reviewed By Frederick A. Hurst

Gail Maddox considers her writing a natural calling that offers her comfort. She writes about things that happen to people around her and to herself. She rejected a suggestion that she take creative writing courses because of her conviction that her creativity flows from her feelings. Whenever she gets the urge (and that is often), she puts pen to paper and a product pops out. Formal courses, she believes, would only stifle the natural process.

Vantage Press recently published her book, The Tucked Away Secret. Her book begins with a sympathetic story about a young Black girl who is raised with several siblings by her mother and “father” in Springfield, Massachusetts without knowing that she was conceived by her mother and another man in her mother’s hometown of Bloomingdale, Georgia. The story is an acute reminder of how members of a large family can conspire to hide a secret from the one person who should be told and the harm that results when the truth finally inadvertently finds its mark.

The Tucked Away Secret weaves the Black migration to the North—dialect and other ethnic speech peculiarities and lifestyles in tow—into a familiar legacy of the trips “down South” to visit relatives who toughed it out, especially grandparents who remained bewildered by the geographical alienation the job-scarce South had forced upon their families.

But the short story is but one of many writings contained in the book of the same title. Ms. Maddox treats us to a variety of 40 stream-of-conscious poems that provide a peek into a potpourri of bare impressions that life left on the author. My favorites were, “Troubled Times” and “Boy You Shined.” The impressions are all mundane and all reflect familiar experiences portrayed by writers from Shakespeare to Richard Wright. Ms. Maddox offers a layperson’s picture of life—right from the gut, unedited and sincere.

The Tucked Away Secret will be available in bookstores in mid April and later in the month, Ms. Maddox will be available for book signings at Edwards Bookstore, Olive Tree Books-n-Voices, Barnes & Noble, Walden Bookstore, Odyssey Bookstore in South Hadley, and in many other venues thereafter. n