"A Piggly Wiggly Christmas" by Robert Dalby: Book Review

"A Piggly Wiggly Christmas" by Robert Dalby
Berkley, 258 pp., $15 (trade paperback)
Reviewed by David Marshall James


Hale ("Mr. Choppy") Dunbar has lost his family-owned Piggly Wiggly grocery store just off the town square in Second Creek, Mississippi, to the exigencies of economic ebbtides.

Read: The big-box chain store out on the bypass.

However, Mr. Choppy has been elected mayor, and is just returning from his honeymoon with wife Gaylie Girl.

She was the girl of his dreams for many decades, during which she married a wealthy man in Chicago and had two children, then was widowed.

So, fate has closed one door for Mr. Choppy while opening several even brighter ones, all the better to render his golden years just that.

In this fourth "Piggly Wiggly" novel by Mississippi author Robert Dalby, Gaylie Girl finds herself not only in the role of newlywed, but also in the part of Girl Friday to her husband, seeing as how his secretary has been compelled to take an early maternity leave during a difficult pregnancy.

Furthermore, Gaylie Girl is trying out her wings as a member of the town's go-to ladies' club, the Nitwitts.

A cynic would say that the Nitwitts like to get plastered and run the show in Second Creek, a charming Delta town not far from Greenwood, MS.

However, the group actually accomplishes a lot of good while making merry, and their latest major project-- at Gaylie Girl's suggestion-- is organizing a coalition of church choirs for a Christmas Eve musical extravaganza in the town square, the better to attract attention to that picturesque, although struggling, venue.

Meanwhile, romance is blooming between Gaylie Girl's much-divorced son and the daughter of another Nitwitt, with the couple aiming to set up a new business in one of the empty storefronts on the square, and to take up residence over the shop.

Nevertheless, all things do conspire against the best-laid plans of the Nitwitts, although-- as in the case of Mr. Choppy-- new doors open when hoped-for ones slam shut.

Dalby's novel is particularly enlivened by its large cast of characters, their idiosyncrasies and eccentricities.

The Nitwitts succeed as a collection of supportive friends and a support group for others largely because of their informality. You're either happy to be a part of the whole, or you're lacking the sole qualification for membership. When it's your turn as hostess, start shaking the Tabasco sauce in the Bloody Mary pitcher.

It would seem fair to call Dalby's book a first-- or, better yet, a kissin'-- cousin to Fannie Flagg's feel-good novels, right down to the Southern grits-iness.

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