Watson, Sterling

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WATSON, Sterling

PERSONAL:

Male. Education: University of Florida, M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Eckerd College, 4200 54th Ave. South, St. Petersburg, FL 33711.

CAREER:

Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, FL, professor of literature and creative writing, director of writing workshop. Taught English and fiction writing at Raiford Prison, Raiford, FL.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Four Florida Arts Council grants.

WRITINGS:

Weep No More, My Brother, Morrow (New York, NY), 1978.

The Calling, Peachtree Publishers (Atlanta, GA), 1986.

Blind Tongues, Dell Publishing (New York, NY), 1989.

Deadly Sweet, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1994.

Sweet Dream Baby, Sourcebooks Landmark (Napierville, IL), 2002.

Author, with Dennis Lehane, of Bad Blood (screenplay). Former fiction editor, Florida Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sterling Watson has taught creative writing at the university level and to prisoners incarcerated in north Florida. The facility at Raiford is also the setting for his debut novel, Weep No More, My Brother, in which an English professor volunteers to teach inmates in hopes of finding a way to avenge his older brother. The man who killed him is now serving time at Raiford, and the teacher makes a deal with two other inmates who can assist him, but at a terrible cost.

Bruce Allen critiqued the novel in Sewanee Review, commenting on what he saw as problems in this first novel, but added that Watson "handles his demanding past/present structure skillfully and writes good graphic prose."

A Publishers Weekly reviewer called the story "taut, hard, imaginative … a portrait of prison and of a man who willfully becomes enmeshed in its life and its psychology."

In The Calling, young Blackford "Toad" Turlow leaves the family farm to work in a convenience store and writes in his cheap rented room. He then moves on to attend college and study under Eldon Odom, a famous Southern novelist. The story is one of the writing class and the students who are changed by their relationship to their instructor. They are not all young and innocent like Toad. They include a Vietnam veteran, an acnescarred bodybuilder, a salesman of sex toys, and a waitress Odom draws into a relationship. Toad eventually finds Odom's self-destructive lifestyle, rife with booze, drugs, and aberrant sexual behavior, so repugnant that he returns to the farm and his sweetheart.

A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that Watson "deftly fuses sardonic wit and graphic realism to portray Toad's growing maturity and his depraved idol's downfall."

Art Gardner reviewed The Calling for West Coast Review of Books, saying that Watson "has a true ability to establish a mood or an attitude with a few words or lines of dialogue. Here he is at his best."

A Kirkus Reviews critic called Blind Tongues "a fine, affecting story about a strong woman who learns to make choices the hard way: with her soft heart." In Watson's third novel, set in 1973, his heroine, Merelene Durham, struggles in a small Florida town, where she raises her two sons—Bull, who is serving in Vietnam, and Roland, a young man brain-damaged since early childhood. Merelene was abandoned by her husband, Mayfield, years earlier and was befriended by Enos Sawyer, a lawyer from a prominent family who returned scarred and disfigured from World War II. Enos wants to marry Merelene and help her retain custody of her son when the state threatens to place him in a closed facility, but Merelene finds herself torn when her husband suddenly reappears after sixteen years, now wealthy and successful, but dying and remorseful.

As the story continues to unfold, it is revealed that the reason Mayfield had originally come to Swinford was that it was all Enos could talk about when they served together during the war—Enos as a pilot and Mayfield as a mechanic. The accident that so damaged Enos was blamed on Mayfield, who was then assigned to dig corpses out of the mud. When the war ended, he hoped to find peace in the small Southern town he had heard so much about. He wooed and married the beautiful young girl the somewhat reclusive Enos had always loved from afar and started a family. Mayfield abandoned them, unable to cope with his son's affliction and still suffering from his humiliation during the war.

In a Los Angeles Times Book Review, Stewart Lindh called Blind Tongues "remarkable" and added that "what is apparent in the Southern novel is a wondrous ceiling—of history, of legend, of event, transforming the South itself into an extended family whose dark secrets are known only to its members."

"It is not the plot but the poetry of Sterling Watson's prose and the depth of his attention to human connectedness that keep you reading Blind Tongues," wrote Judith Paterson in Washington Post Book World.

Library Journal's Rex E. Klett wrote that Watson's Deadly Sweet "contains all the elements of a good historical mystery without recreating a distant past." In Watson's fourth novel, former football player and attorney, and now a boat salesman, Eddie Priest is approached by beautiful Corey Darrow, whose knowledge of an agribusiness scam has put her life in jeopardy. Eddie dismisses her fears, but Corey is found dead the next day. Her equally lovely sister, Sawnie, entreats Eddie to assist her in finding the killer. Guilty because of his refusal to believe Corey, he agrees to help Sawnie, who has political aspirations and motives of her own.

A Publishers Weekly reviewer called Deadly Sweet "a stunning, intricate bit of Florida noir.…It's hair-raising fun to watch the colorful characters work their own agendas."

In a Booklist review, Wes Lukowsky remarked that if Watson "continues to produce work of this quality, he'll soon be the standard with which others are compared."

A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote that Sweet Dream Baby has "all the elements of a classic southern horror tale." It is a coming-of-age-story set in the 1950s South. Twelve-year-old Travis leaves Omaha, Nebraska to spend the summer with his grandparents in Widow Rock, Florida while his mother recovers from a nervous breakdown. There he finds a soul mate in his wild sixteen-year-old Aunt Delia, a beauty who is desired by all the boys in town. Delia shares her secrets with Travis, introduces him to rock 'n' roll, and takes him cruising in her Chevy.

Annette Clifford reviewed the novel for Florida Today Online, writing that Travis, "innocent upon his arrival, is thrust into the fires of incestuous desire, murderous rage, and rank hypocrisy. His transformation from passive child to man of action is brutal."

A Publishers Weekly contributor felt that Watson "portrays the rich relationship between Travis and Delia with convincing psychological detail" and added that "he proves himself a first-rate storyteller."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 15, 1994, Wes Lukowsky, review of Deadly Sweet, p. 117; October 1, 2002, Meredith Parets, review of Sweet Dream Baby, p. 302.

Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 1986, review of The Calling, p. 250; December 15, 1988, review of Blind Tongues, pp. 1771-1772; July 15, 1994, review of Deadly Sweet, p. 947; August 1, 2002, review of Sweet Dream Baby, p. 1074.

Library Journal, April 1, 1978, Henri C. Veit, review of Weep No More, My Brother, p. 779; February 1, 1989, Thomas L. Kilpatrick, review of Blind Tongues, p. 84; September 1, 1994, Rex E. Klett, review of Deadly Sweet, p. 219.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, Stewart Lindh, review of Blind Tongues, p. 13.

Publishers Weekly, April 10, 1978, review of Weep No More, My Brother, p. 67; February 28, 1986, review of The Calling, p. 114; July 25, 1994, review of Deadly Sweet, p. 36; September 30, 2002, review of Sweet Dream Baby, p. 45.

Sewanee Review, fall, 1978, Bruce Allen, review of Weep No More, My Brother, pp. 609-617.

Washington Post Book World, February 5, 1989, Judith Paterson, review of Blind Tongues, p. 6.

West Coast Review of Books, Volume 1, issue 1, 1986, Art Gardner, review of The Calling, p. 23.