The Sailor's Holiday

Five interconnected novellas--"59 and Raining," "Sailor's Holiday," "The Sultans of Africa," "Consuelo's Kiss," and "Bad Day for the Leopard Man"--relate the adventures of Sailor Ripley and Lula Pace Fortune, two eccentric Southern lovers.

Four violence-ridden novellas well served by on-pitch dialogue trace the intersecting paths of characters whom readers met in Wild at Heart.

The genre of these four novellas, a sequel to Gifford's Wild at Heart (made into the 1990 film of the same name), might be termed "gothic noir. " They take place in an American South filled with hoodlums, dangerous women, psychopaths, epigram-spouting good old boys and girls, and an air of general malevolence.

At the center are Sailor and Lula, the ill-fated lovers of Wild at Heart. They are reunited in New Orleans, years after the events of the earlier book, when Pace, their son, is kidnapped. Back together, they seek to redeem youthful mistakes through devotion to one another and everyday normalcy, though fully aware of the wild life nearby that threatens to pull their precarious union apart.

Though an absurdist streak running through these tales nearly reduces them to caricature, Sailor and Lula's passion for one another gives these works a flesh-and-blood emotional reality.