Sometimes looks can kill.
Danielle Greer, 17, is teenybopping at the mall when a modeling scout spots her and changes her life irrevocably. In that fashion moment, “hick is chic,” and Danielle quickly becomes the freewheeling, sensation-seeking “Dani.”
“Claudia, my agent, said I was such a ‘country bumpkin’ that I had to be something ‘really Southern and hickish. You know, like honky-tonk town.’ I took some offense to her suggestions but perhaps not enough.”
So begins Lo Patrick’s third novel, “Fast Boys and Pretty Girls” (Sourcebooks, $17.99). An unformed, corn-fed nymph, plucked from the backwoods of North Georgia to model underwear in New York City ― what could go wrong?
Credit: Sourcebooks
Credit: Sourcebooks
Patrick’s novel jumps back and forth between the narrator’s heady adolescence, and her decidedly more down-to earth adulthood when her four daughters discover mysterious remains in a ditch on the family home place where she has recently returned. Are they linked somehow to that glossy, skin-deep world of cover girls? Or to the local bad-boy wastrel Dani hopelessly loves. (He rides a motorcycle, of course, hence the “fast” in the title.) More seasoned women will recognize the catnip-like effect he has on her ― and yearn to warn her.
In the background, fitfully calling the shots is Dani’s mother, who comes across as an outspoken, hill-country truth-teller ― at first. Patrick keeps the reader guessing about all of these characters as they collide with each other like billiard balls.
Patrick, 44, who lives in Atlanta, also has written “The Floating Girls” and “The Night the River Wept,” which feature stubborn, twangy young women grappling with haunting secrets seemingly beyond their maturity.
“I do tend to lean toward a coming-of-age story,” says Patrick. “All of my protagonists are busting out of their shell in one way or another. Finding oneself is a recurring theme in my work, which might mean I am still trying to find myself. ‘Fast Boys and Pretty Girls’ has much more of a focus on regret, guilt and shame than my other works. I could explore those themes for years as they are so formative. An entire life could be based on those three states of mind alone.”
Patrick is no stranger to the intense scene of head-shots, high cheekbones and eating disorders, but she always stayed behind the lens.
Hailing from a “family of lawyers,” she grew up in Lilburn but then went on what she calls her “rolling stone tour,” bouncing between New York, Miami and Los Angeles. In L.A., she worked as a junior booking agent, and the job left an impression.
Credit: Megan Dougherty
Credit: Megan Dougherty
“The influx of young girls, and boys for that matter, into Los Angeles who were then thrust into all manner of bizarre situations — some good, some awful, some somewhere in between — captivated me,” she says. “The business is very fast-paced, deals are made in minutes and people are flown around like barrels of oats or cattle. I could never shake the sense that almost every girl I met who was there to model was completely overwhelmed, out of her depth, scared, desperate and being taken advantage of in one way or another. It is the business of humans on the most superficial level.”
Patrick attended Loyola Marymount University and stayed in California seven years where she also worked as a concert promoter and musician. (P.J. Harvey was a role model.) She was always hustling and paying dues around spotlights.
“You might say it took me a long time to grow up,” she says. “You might say I’m fixated on becoming a grown-up.”
Toward that end, Patrick attended law school at the University of Miami.
“It taught me to focus, concentrate and finish tasks,” she says. “It was invaluable to me as I have a very scattered, disorganized disposition that needed to be reined in. In retrospect, a lot of things well before attending law school pointed at me wanting to write or be a storyteller of sorts. Being a musician in my 20s was just another way of trying to create different worlds.”
Something must have stuck because Patrick graduated magna cum laude.
“I left L.A. to pursue substance,” she says matter-of-factly. “I was tired of style over substance. So I spent a ton of time in the library enjoying quiet days of contemplation. I found I really enjoyed sitting in front of my computer all day lost in thought and occasionally typing something meaningful.”
During an internship with a prosecutor, she again encountered a tableau of troubled, mismanaged lives.
“I was surrounded by all these fascinating stories that were tragic, sad, profound,” she recalls. “I thought: So much of this would make a good mystery novel. And I would prefer to just make it up than deal with the harsh reality of it all. I’m very much a daydreamer.”
Patrick moved home and briefly practiced law, married a graphic designer and had two children. But she also began to write furiously. It took her 11 years to get published.
“It was a journey of humility with a lot of rejection letters, regrouping, starting over and seeking out criticism and advice,” she says. “Writing is like anything else: The more you practice, the better you get. There have been hundreds of thousands of deleted words over the years and manuscripts that I eventually shelved. It’s all part of it, and all worth it.”
“The Floating Girls,” Patrick’s 2022 debut, is narrated by a feisty 12-year-old girl in the mold of Scout Finch. It earned a Townsend Prize nomination and a nod as a Reader’s Digest “Editor’s Pick.” Her sophomore follow-up was more of a detective story.
“Lo Patrick is the kind of author you dream of working with,” says her editor M.J. Johnson. “Dedicated to her craft, sharp and empathetic towards her characters and unfailingly kind in everything she does. Her books transport you to the small towns we have grown up driving away from and, unfailingly, turning back toward, and her suspense always comes with a beautiful dose of compassion for her main characters. She is truly a star of the Southern novel — I adore her.”
Despite her vagabond past, Patrick has set all of her fiction in atmospheric Georgia locales — a point of homegirl pride.
“I’m very much a Georgia girl,” she says with a warm lilt. “There is nothing like the South for a good story. The humidity lends itself to a shedding of secrets, barriers, burdens and the rest. It’s too hot to carry all of that (stuff) around, better to spill the beans and lighten one’s load.”
Author events
Lo Patrick. The author will read and sign “Fast Boys and Pretty Girls.” 6:30 p.m. July 8. $25, includes book, appetizers and drinks. Poe & Company Bookstore, 1890 Heritage Walk, Milton. 770-797-5566, www.poeandcompanybookstore.com
Also 7:30 p.m. July 17. Free. With Cathy Rigg, author of “That Which Binds Us.” Bookmiser, 3822 Roswell Road, Marietta. 770-509-5611, www.bookmiser.net
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