In the best tradition of southern storytelling, Uke Rivers Delivers features raconteurs as beguiling as the tales they tell. These lyrical, darkly humorous monologues portray a range of denizens of the American South desperately trying to come to grips with their inherited pasts. A Confederate reenactor receives a message from the beyond to lay to rest the remains of Stonewall Jackson's horse. A docent at Washington and Lee University's Lee Chapel offers prim instruction on the facts and legends about "the General" with both reverence and irony. The young son of a lewd, alcoholic, self-dubbed evangelist acquires the wits—and the will—for survival by protecting the family's sunflower crops. A midget ukelele virtuoso is so surprised by his own eruption into violence that he can attribute it only to genetics. One of Jeff Davis's fellow cross-dressers; the killer of John Wilkes Booth; a Rebel deserter whose superior exacts his pound of flesh—all these characters and more, through their twisted and torn vernaculars, seek understanding and revival in R. T. Smith's superb collection.

An interview with R. T. Smith distributed with review copies of Uke Rivers Delivers.

Barbara Outland: What kind of territory is covered in these stories?
RTS: The stories are emotionally and geographically Southern, unfolding around small towns or the country in Virginia and Georgia. There’s a definite Civil War thread – with a tour guide, a reenactor, a rogue Confederate cavalryman and the staff of Jefferson Davis prominently displayed on the surface.

Outland: So there are deeper implications?
RTS: Religion runs through it and is crucial to the opening story, “Jesus Wept.” Most of my characters speak a language informed by Bible-thumping Christianity, and hymn singing as a beautiful and haunted activity keeps coming up, whether peeling the paint off the walls or serving as a murder weapon. Booth’s killer Boston Corbett is a self-confessed zealot, Uke Rivers begins his musical career in church. The phrase “Jesus Wept” runs as an undercurrent, expressing exasperation in the face of the absurd. ...READ THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE