Angela Jackson-Brown’s new novel is set in Troy, Alabama in November and December 1967, during the Johnson administration and at the height of the Vietnam War. “Untethered” is a scrupulously realistic novel, and might be called a quiet novel, or a slow novel with little action on stage, but I think it would be more accurate to call it a novel of tension, anxiety, stress, and worry.
Told from the point of view of Katia Daniels, thirty-ish, we watch this organized, intelligent, empathic woman do her very best at a highly stressful job: the Executive Director of the Pike County Home for Negro Boys, 15 boys whose parents and family either don’t want them or are unable to care for them.
Many of these boys have been through traumatic experiences of abuse and loss, but Daniels has had some successes. On her office wall are photographs of boys she has helped through high school and seen graduate and go off to college. The new white Board President, however, named Samuel P. Arrington IV, thinks the boys should quit school and learn a trade. Daniels has assembled some very caring house parents and staff and fights back as best she can.
There are still other problems, however. We learn that her brothers Aaron and Marcus, both in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, are Missing in Action. Katia’s mother is utterly distraught, of course. Katia herself has recently undergone a hysterectomy and is feeling bad about herself. She had always been a “big” woman and lacks, as we say, self-esteem, but now she cannot bear children and feels no man could marry her.
At the group home, Chad, a troubled boy, is adjusting slowly, having been basically pimped out to men by his drug-addicted mother. Now, suddenly, and probably briefly, Chad’s mother is clean, and the system wants to send Chad back to a really nasty scene. Without sufficient regard to the specific circumstances, the system wants the child with the mother, even if the mother is a monster. Chad runs away, and the reader gets to see how uninterested, even hostile, the police are to problems in the Black community.
Then love appears in the handsome form of Seth, a Vietnam vet who has lost a leg and is working as a contractor doing work at the home. Seth obviously adores Katia, but she won’t let him near, feeling unworthy. Katia suffers from migraines; who wouldn’t?
Jackson-Brown errs, I think, on the side of excessive detail. We watch Katia walk across a room, drink coffee, and so on. It is accurate, I am sure, but slows things down. She has however, set up a whole bunch of difficult problems. Will Katia’s brothers be found? Will she keep her job, allow Seth to love her? What will become of Chad? All the problems will be resolved, but not all happily.
