Lone Star Book Blog Tour: Stork Bite by L.K. Simonds (Review)

“A body had to remember to take people as they came, individually, instead of lumping them all together in a bunch.”

Stork Bite by L.K. Simonds teems with life and death; choices and consequences; guilt and mercy. In 1913 in Louisiana, seventeen-year-old David Walker accidentally killed a white man, a Klansman at that, and had to make a choice: go home to his family and confess his crime or stay away and stew forever in remorse and regret. This story spans from 1913 to 2012 and is told in hauntingly georgous prose.

Many lives move forward and intertwine across Stork Bite, and discovering the connections across the pages is as entertaining as it is heartbreaking. Through war, prohibition, bootlegging, marriage, and living life to the fullest before crashing into mortality, Stork Bite leaves no emotional stone unturned. Giving out too many details and throwing down spoilers would be so easy and a shame because the threads securing the characters and plot lines together must be revealed slowly and experienced and savored. While racism is a looming antagonist throughout, it does not completely define the overall story. Instead, Stork Bite is defined by love, hope, success, and forgiveness across that chasm between black and white and even across that great divide between men and women.

Characterization, relationships, and outstanding description are the driving forces of Stork Bite, and L.K. Simonds knows how to mine the deepest sentiments and thoughts and then breathe life into each character, one by one. The story builds in due time, and the characters often meld together or brush against one another through the years, bobbing and sometimes sinking in the wake of their choices and the general snares of living.

Stork Bite is a literary treasure that awaits any reader ready to plunge into the mystique of Louisiana throughout the twentieth century and settle deep into the ordinary yet precious lives of unforgettable characters that will nibble at the edges of conscious thought long after the story has finished. The ending will break your heart yet give you hope that love will always triumph and soar higher than anything else on earth and in heaven.

L. K. Simonds is a Fort Worth local whose debut novel, All In, was published in 2019.