The Evening Shades

by Lee Martin

Genres: General Fiction; Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction; Small Town & Rural

Synopsis

The highly anticipated follow-up to Pulitzer Prize finalist The Bright Forever, The Evening Shades tells the story of two lonely people in a small Midwestern town and the dark secrets tormenting them . . .

One afternoon in the autumn of 1972, a lonely widow in Mt. Gilead, Illinois, makes the impromptu decision to rent out a room in her house to a stranger who has come to town. It is risky—she doesn’t know anything about him. But Edith Green can no longer bear a life lived alone. And Henry Dees is haunted by the past he carries with him from another small town, particularly by the death of a little girl that some people think was his fault.

And slowly, Henry and Edith's suspenseful dance between secrets and trust leads them to start revealing things to each other — and themselves ...

Release date: March 25, 2025

Publisher: Melville House

Print pages: 320

Sample

MT. GILEAD, ILLINOIS

He came in September just as autumn was beginning in earnest. The nights were cold and some mornings frost slicked the grass and the rooftops. The people of Mt. Gilead went about their business under cloudless skies—all that blue above them—and they did their best not to think of the winter days to come.

The sun set a tad sooner each evening, and in the waning light farmers, busy cutting their soybeans, hauled their grain to the elevator and then stopped at Griff’s Barber Shop for a quick cut, or the Town Talk Cafe for a bite of supper. The dusk was full of dust and chaff, and as the dark fell, the farmers in line at the elevator’s scales stood in the swath of their trucks’ head- lights and ribbed one another and talked big to keep themselves from having to admit the truth—Mt. Gilead was a small town that was going nowhere fast. It was 1972, and the garment fac- tory had gone out and the shoe factory soon followed. No one wanted to think about the prospect of businesses shutting their doors, young people moving away, abandoned houses falling in on themselves—so folks did their best to deny that Mt. Gilead was on a downward slide.

But now here was this stranger, and though no one knew who he was, or where he’d come from, or what he might be carrying with him, they felt a shimmer of something brighter, some spark of his world rubbing up against theirs, and they waited to see what might come of that marriage. Maybe, just maybe, his coming was a sign that Mt. Gilead’s luck was about to change.

He drove a ’65 Mercury Comet, powder blue, and even though it was seven years old, it looked as new as it must have the day he drove it off the dealer’s lot. Here was a man who knew how to take care. He eased that Comet up to the pump at Hutch’s Sunoco and took his time getting out. He was a man in his middle years. A man who wore khaki slacks that were sharply creased, a poplin jacket, zipped to his throat, and ox- fords that had been freshly shined.

“Hi-Test, please,” he said to Hutch’s pump jockey, Bertie Squiggs. “Fill it.”

Bertie pushed his St. Louis Cardinals cap back on his head and peered out from beneath its brim, studying the stranger for just a moment before pointing his finger at him and saying with a grin, “You got it, Mister. You’re the boss.”

While Bertie pumped the gas, the stranger popped the hood and checked his oil. Bertie was a good-hearted man who never intended to cause anyone trouble, but he was also a man who sometimes questioned the worth of his life. Never married, he lived in the Balm of Gilead mobile home park west of town and did his best to clean the oil and grease from the creases in his knuckles before attending services at the Central Christian Church. He’d been a bachelor a good long while, and he was facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life alone. Still he put on a good face.

“I could do that for you,” he said to the stranger, eager to please. “It’s sorta my job, you know.”

“It’s no trouble.” The stranger grabbed a blue paper towel from the dispenser Hutch kept above the tub of windshield cleaning fluid and the squeegee, and he held the dipstick against it and took his time registering the oil’s level. Then he wiped the dipstick clean and eased it back in place. He let the hood down easy, making sure it latched. He squinted at the price on the pump. Then he fished a billfold from his hip pocket, fingered out a few bills, and gave them to Bertie. “No trouble at all,” the stranger said.

“That do it for ya?” Bertie asked.


Yes, the stranger said, that would indeed do it.


“Where ya headed anyway?” Bertie put his hands on his hips and gave the stranger a big smile. “Not many out-of-town- ers find us here so far off the big road.”

“This is Mt. Gilead, isn’t it?” the stranger asked.


“That’s right, friend,” said Bertie. “Population 2,314.”

“Well, friend.” The stranger stressed the word. Then he clapped Bertie on the shoulder. “I’m exactly where I thought I was, and that’s never a bad thing, far as I can tell.”

Edith Green had just stopped her Lincoln Continental, the big boat of a car her father had left her when he died, on the other side of the pump, and when she opened her door, a breeze came up. It rattled the leaves on the giant oak across the street. It set the yellow and blue pennants strung from the roof over the pumps to the garage to whipping and snapping, and it caught Edith’s head scarf—quite a nice scarf it was, a green silk scarf with pink and blue roses on it, the scarf her father had given her for Christmas, that last Christmas before his heart seized and he left her.

The scarf lifted on the breeze, fluttering past the stranger, who, at the last instant, reached up his hand and plucked it out of the air.

That scarf was the most elegant item of clothing Edith owned. For the most part, she wore men’s twill trousers and flannel shirts and barn coats. Never what anyone would con- sider a looker, she loved that silk scarf and the way it made her feel almost pretty when she wore it.

The stranger carried it to her. “I believe this is yours,” he said.

Bertie watched her take the scarf. She balled it up in her hand and pressed it to her chest. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you around here,” she said to the stranger.

“No, ma’am. I’ve never been here before, but I’m thinking I just might stay.” He gave her a little bow. “My name is Henry Dees.”