Review Time: GONE AND DONE IT by Maggie Toussaint

by Kaley Whittle

Baxley Powell is not what most people would call "lucky". With a missing husband and an energetic daughter to watch over, all Baxley wants to do is get the job done. She does everything within her power to keep her little household afloat, whether that means spending hours in the sun doing landscaping jobs or filling her house with other people's animals. Stress has become her devilish companion. Baxley is just trying to finish this hell of a landscaping job so she can get paid, and (god forbid) maybe rest easy for a while. But she's turning over more than mulch, and dead bodies have a tendency to complicate things.



"I lowered down on my belly and brushed away the remaining dirt with my gloved fingers. Stroke by stroke until the empty orbs of twin eye sockets stared back up at me. There was no mistaking this species. I'd found a human skull."



I loved this book. I loved every word, every page, every southern turn of phrase that rang so familiar in my mind. It's not easy to bring life into a book, even less when you're writing about death, but each character brought a new sense of realism. They each had their own goals, their own ideas. Independence is a hard thing to portray within characters, but Toussaint did a splendid job of it.

Let's focus on our main character though. This story is told from the perspective of Baxley Powell, a single mom trying to raise her daughter in southern Georgia. Baxley holds a semi-respectable job within her little town, working landscaping and pet-sitting jobs whenever she can and balancing the checkbooks most admirably, especially when there's nothing to balance. But there's something about Baxley that just refuses to let her slide into place with everyone else around her. Just like her father, Baxley Powell can dreamwalk.

It's a complicated and fascinating characteristic that Toussaint has allowed to play out within her novel. Everything around Baxley seems so familiar, so relatable, but she is so obviously different (even before that blasted white streak makes it way through her dark hair). This is old magic, and seeing this in such a modern setting just adds another wonderful layer to this book.

With troubles in the spirit and real world alike, a new consulting job for the police (that comes with it's very own troublesome sheriff), and dead bodies popping up wherever they do so please, Baxley has her work cut out for her.

Oh, and there's snakes.