Burden

"Burden, a twenty-one-old grocery store clerk in Walterboro, South Carolina, has two things on his mind: suicide and sex - suicide because of overwhelming guilt for his role in the death of a beloved cousin, sex because if you live in a small Southern town stuffed with unfulfilled wives and their vengeful men, it's got to be a great way to go. Of course, with such a plan there are bound to be complications: second thoughts, husbands who won't take the bait, and most surprising of all to Burden himself, the return to town of the one woman for whom it might be worth staying alive.". "Burden's women are unforgettable: Maude, whose kneecaps can make a man fall to the floor in a swoon and who's married to the town's doctor, a much older man not possibly capable of living up to those kneecaps or the woman who goes with them. Pru, whose passion for afternoon lovemaking is close to insatiable and whose long-haul truck-driving husband, Eugene, is rarely on the scene to accommodate. Then there's Jo, a different creature altogether - the woman Burden might truly love but whom he seems to have let slip from his grasp."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.