UNT Dallas College of Law - Library Blog

The Gone Dead - Book Review

Recently there has been increased demand for books written by and about Black people and Black experiences. Books about Martin Luther King Jr. or the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s are typically the most prominently displayed when seeking written material about the Black experience. We have all seen the same stories, same black and white photos, and same faces for decades, and while these stories hold great importance, there is even more to be discovered by Black authors. I sought out novels with Black protagonists, experiences different from my own, and with uniquely personal stories. With this in mind I discovered The Gone Dead by Chanelle Benz, a novel released in June 2019. The Gone Dead is Benz’s first novel.

The novel explores one woman’s journey home to the Mississippi Delta where she uncovers her family’s mysterious past. Marred by the life she has built far from home, her memories and understanding of her childhood begin to take shape and open new unanswered questions. Our protagonist is Billie James, whose father was a respected and prolific Black poet. Just as he was rising to new literary acclaim his “accidental” death creates chaos when Billie is just four years old. Years later as an adult, Billie revisits the home she once knew in the Mississippi Delta after her mother’s death. Her mother kept Billie away from the modest home that she had not seen since her father’s death. Billie starts to unravel a web of secrets that surrounds her secluded home, and the community it resides within. She begrudgingly befriends a helpful neighbor and a curious professor to piece together her family’s mysterious past, as her extended family is absent or unhelpful.

Events in the small Mississippi town escalate as the truth about her father’s death and the events that followed begin to come to light. It becomes increasingly clear that the region’s racist past continues into the present, making Billie’s return a dangerous one. The novel shifts perspectives multiple times throughout the book, and we see the mindset of multiple characters as they relate to Billie and her family. One reviewer on GoodReads sums up the uniqueness of this perspective perfectly: “The Southern mystery with a strong sense of place is not a new genre, but it is a mostly white one.” A sense of place is precisely what this book portrays, descriptions of squeaky floorboards you can hear and heat you can feel. Not all of Billie’s (or the reader’s) questions are answered, and some reviewers sought a clean ending with no loose ends. Some aspects of the book do bring closure, and others leave Billie and the reader with more questions and more work to do. There are not times in life when everything is “done,” rare are the perfect bows or resolutions that fit like a last puzzle piece. To me the untidy endings and half-resolutions felt more real, and gave me reason to continue to think about the story long after I had put the book down.

- Hannah Vaughan, MS-LS Candidate 2022