SALLOWSFIELD
by Cliff Hudder
Literary Fiction / Humor / Saga / Texas / Yorkshire
Publisher: Texas Review Press
Pages: 390
Publication Date: October 21, 2024
SYNOPSIS
Wyatt W. Sallow, MBA—poet, business ethics professor, and coach of the 8th ranked collegiate chess team in East Texas—travels to the heart of northern England to trace his family origins in mundane Sallowsfield, only to find his supposed ancestry a mirage. He does have a real past, however: one that stalks him across the green hillsides in echoes of his catastrophic marriage, the lingering shadow of a lost child, and—there, in person, inexplicably emerging from the town’s faux-Victorian train station—“X,” the enigmatic object of his unrequited passion and a figure as perplexing as an algebraic variable.
On his eight-day tour/pilgrimage/mock epic journey, Wyatt pursues the specter of his lost love and crosses paths with the citizens of this down-at-its-heels market town as they struggle to grasp the all-consuming obsessions, ghosts, and X-factors that confound their days.
Thought-provoking yet dryly humorous, Sallowsfield weaves diverse elements into a story both light-hearted and philosophical, exploring along the way universal human touchstones of obsession, ruined love, and the inexplicable mysteries that shape our lives.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cliff Hudder received an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Houston in 1995 and a PhD in American Literature from Texas A&M in 2017. He has been an archaeological laborer, a film and video editor, photographer, air compressor mechanic, electrical lineman, and educator. His fiction has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review and other journals and his work has received the Barthelme and Michener Awards, the Peden Prize, and the Short Story Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. His novella, Splinterville, won the 2007 Texas Review Fiction Award, and his novel, Pretty Enough for You, was named a Top Ten Texas Favorite by Lone Star Literary Life in 2015. In 2017 Cliff was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.
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“You can’t go down a road without encountering an intersection.”
Sallowsfield: A Novel by Cliff Hudder is an interesting mix of travel narrative and enigmatic discovery. Who exactly is Wyatt Sallow, and why does he travel from East Texas to a town in England called Sallowsfield, with almost no family name research or pre-planning?
Wyatt Sallow is a puzzle, and the abundance of streaming thought and description does not necessarily allow the reader to solve the mystery completely. First impressions are important, of course, but as the story progresses, the first impression of Wyatt shifts merrily and haphazardly as his character both develops and devolves. Is he a bumbling fool and victim because of his own life choices? Is he soft in the head or maybe a conniving, self-loathing degenerate? Or does he perhaps crave the chaos and unpredictability of his own making? Or could he merely be interested in his genealogy?
“Terrible things were always happening. It didn’t matter where you went.”
And who are the odd characters drifting in and out and back into Wyatt’s orbit across the chapters? This story takes the reader on an epic journey as Wyatt, a seemingly absent-minded business ethics professor at Taylor State College in East Texas, seeks the history of his last name in a British town called Sallowsfield that may or may not have been founded by one of Wyatt’s ancestors.
What Wyatt discovers and encounters on his journey may surprise and confuse you, with its Brigadoon-like aura and is-this-guy-for-real vibe. One thing is clear: Wyatt Sallow is messy, curious, and completely unreliable; however, his true self is no doubt as deep as the Mariana trench, and this novel probably only scratches the surface of this peculiar man.
Cliff Hudder is clearly a master at misdirection, intrigue, and characterization. By the end of this unique literary fiction, you might wonder if the protagonist has actually developed in the predictable arc, or if Wyatt continues to sink ever deeper into the quagmire of his questionable identity and maybe even sanity.
With the constant shifting into the past and into other character descriptions, the pacing is naturally a bit slow, and teasing out the overall plot can be a challenge; however, stay the course! Wyatt is a thoroughly compelling chap, and his adventure just might prompt you to settle into some self-reflection and ponder your own motivation to seek answers to unanswerable questions.
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