malcolm allred

Caught between the adamant demands of an Old-South uncle determined to protect the family name, and his own unwavering efforts to rid himself of his “toxic” virginity, Jack Smith of Smith Station, Mississippi, struggles to ignore his alter ego - his friend Archie - when Archie offers him a view of life that has thus far escaped him. The worst happens: Jack takes part in a voyeuristic evening that backfires. Threatened with exposure, his uncle’s certain wrath, and death threats from a cheating high school football coach, Jack responds in typical teenage fashion by packing a gun and praying.

Jack’s life changes when the wife of the football coach demands details of her husband’s betrayal. Confounded by his lust for the beautiful woman as opposed to his “honorable” though unspoken desire for a virginal young lady who is the steady girlfriend of the captain of the football team, Jack further endangers the family honor with a bout of fisticuffs in the local café/pool hall.

Intertwined with Jack’s conundrums is his effort to learn the truth about a persistent rumor regarding his parents. Did his mother really poison his father fifteen years earlier, then leave town for good with another man? His uncle knows the truth, but the refined drunk will not blacken the memory of his brother or his family’s nobility by revealing it.

Though the ever-present gods of mirth often intervene, How I Found a Remedy for Innocence is in essence the tale of a young man’s struggle with Old South tradition in a world in which that tradition is slowly fading.