Sara Vogan

First published in 1981, In Shelly's Leg is a novel about a group of friends who congregate in Shelly's Leg, a bar in a small Montana town. Mostly the story centers around Margaret, a divorced mother of two, and her boyfriend, Woody, who wants to hit the road with his country band and wants Margaret to come along. Also, there is Sullivan, the bar's owner, who is still mourning the death of his lover, Shelly, the bar's founder. Margaret and her best friend, Rita, are the pitcher and catcher for the bar's fast-pitch women's softball team, league champions six years running. The novel suffers from some of the usual drawbacks of books about groups of ne'er do wells congregating in bars or cafes or the like. Some of the characters remain shadows, and there is a romanticizing of their backstories, their problems, and their quirky personae. But I do think Sara handled those issues better than many authors before or since, and the problem was fairly minor in scope, here. What I liked best was that the story moves along nicely, and that characterizations of the main players were well done; their interactions seemed realistic and struck a chord. And though I did not agree with or care for the judgements the other characters made regarding Margaret, the decisions she makes and the reasons she makes them, I'm not sure that I was meant to.… (mehr)