When I hear there is another book by Lee Smith, it brightens my day. There are only a handful of authors who elicit that response. Some writers write too fast. Some, I wish would cease altogether. This new novel is set, as was the sad ending of the memoir “Dimestore,” and the 2020 novel “Blue Marlin,” in Key West, a locale that is now almost as dear to Smith as Grundy, Virginia or Hillsborough, North Carolina.
“Silver Alert” is, mostly, a two-person novel. In a sensible world it would quickly be made into a fairly inexpensive and wonderfully funny movie. Herb Atlas is an older man, 83, with grown children, stepchildren, son-in-law, grandchildren, all of it -what Zorba would call “the Full Catastrophe”—a new kind of character for Smith. He is a Yankee, a Jew, and very rich. Herb’s first wife died. Other adventures ended in divorce. Now Herb is happily married for 12 years in a home they love, to the much-younger Susan Summerville, who ran an art gallery. Nobody approved.
His daughter Marcie had said “she just wants your money.” His daughter Ashley said It wasn’t fair to Susan. She would be burdened by caring for him in his old age. Now she is 70, and his beautiful, stylish, humorous, charming wife has suddenly, tragically come down with severe early onset dementia. She is mute, or angry, withdrawn, vacant, and Herb is caring for her. Life, the reader realizes, is madly unpredictable. Herb, never religious anyway, feels there is no god, and if there is, he is a jerk.
This, to Herb, is nothing less than miraculous. He is deeply grateful and harbors no sexual desires, only gratitude, but then his family, en masse, led by a hopelessly pompous professor son-in-law, Dr. Abe Beerman, “guru to the geezers,” a pompous academic in chinos and sandals, arrives for an “intervention.” They all know best what is right for Herb. Susan must be put in an institution; Herb must go to a nursing home. Dee Dee, some of whose past becomes known, is to be rejected and ejected.
Powerless to resist the combined forces of his family, Herb and Dee Dee flee up Route 1 in his Porsche. Although the family has issued a “silver alert,” they drive on, for one last joyous road trip, trying to get to Orlando, to the Magic Kingdom.
