The Last Verse by Caroline Frost

The Last Verse is a tour de force second novel written by author Caroline Frost whose debut novel Shadows of Pecan Hollow (2022) set in East Texas won the Crook’s Corner Literary Prize and was nominated for additional awards. It is not hard to predict readers will welcome more from this author after reading this full-of-surprises novel. The glitz and glamour, rhinestone studded shirts and cowboy boots prevalent in Nashville conceal many a broken heart. 

The Last Verse begins with a prologue forty years after the lamentable tale of Twyla Higgins. As she resumes her life outside of a jail cell, she sings one of her own haunting, bone-chilling songs. “Her music takes you from the gates of heaven to the darkest hell and back again because she knows…all she’s ever done, all she knows to do, is render it in song.”

Country Star with a Knack for Songwriting

This hard-luck story of an aspiring songwriter whose young life has been filled with discouraging words, unwarranted harsh criticisms and old-time religion wielded repressively begins in North Texas on the outskirts of Fort Worth. 

Protagonist/narrator Twyla Higgins has been writing songs since she was ten. Music, lyrics and harmonies whisper to her while she is working, singing in the church choir or attempting to ignore her mother’s biting admonitions. She keeps pen and paper in a pocket in her drab dress to jot down inspirations until she can transfer them to her songbook. Twyla had taken to heart the words of her Daddy, “Every song is like a soul that wants to be born.”  For her, his few words are precious gold. 

Mickey Higgins, Daddy, was a singer/songwriter with a traveling bluegrass band called The Sundowners with one moderately successful album to their credit. A horrific accident on his day job cost him a hand, ended his playing days and set him on the road to becoming a drug addict. Twyla hadn’t seen him much since she was eight and he died the following year, interred without a service. 

Her mother Faith remarried and fervently turned to Jesus becoming a pillar of the nondenominational evangelical First Tabernacle Church. For Twyla, the day the music died came when Faith built a bonfire in their backyard and relegated nearly all of Mickey’s “devils music” record collection to the flames. Worldly music had become contraband in the Higgins household. “Pearl”, his cherished vintage 1930’s Martin guitar and Twyla’s only legacy was spared only after she vowed to use it to spread the gospel in song. 

“My calling is music” became crystal clear to this repressed 19-year-old. She was home-schooled with only a sketchy education, strictly supervised and frequently admonished about bad boys who would lead her astray. Slim and well-groomed Faith ridiculed her daughter about her weight and unattractiveness while at the same time ensuring Twyla was always modestly clad in dowdy, ill-fitting dresses and clodhopper shoes that would have made a Carmelite nun shudder in dismay. Her crowning glory of long, thick titian golden red hair was bound up in too-tight braids. 

Solace was found a mile and a half away in the listening booths of the New Groove Record Shop owned by Eli, a Black Vietnam Veteran pacifist. For a few quarters at a time, she could spend hours listening to her idols Elvis Presley and Sister Rosetta along with other favorites, new and old releases and her beloved father’s one album.  

The Journey to Graceland

On August 16, 1977, a fateful sweltering hot day, her life would irrevocably change.

Faith announced the two of them would be going on a mission trip to Central America with the unstated hope Twyla would return committed to the zealous leader of the trip. Before her protests became heated, her stepfather’s radio program was interrupted with a news flash, “The King is dead”; Elvis Presley was dead at 42 of suspected cardiac arrest and Graceland would be open to the public for mourners to pay their respects.  Twyla’s desire to travel to Memphis using her own savings was firmly overruled; that money was summarily earmarked by her mother to pay for her mission trip. 

This finally snapped the heretofore binding tether. The shy, obedient girl who had never been out of Texas and seldom traveled to nearby Dallas quietly packed a few essentials including her guitar and her meager savings, snuck out and boarded a bus for Memphis. It was the boldest action she had ever taken. 

Immediate Presley family and friends were given time for a private visitation before 80,000 mournful fans descended upon Graceland, lining Elvis Presley Boulevard, thronging the gates with an estimated 30,000 fans waiting for hours in the stifling heat to pass by his open casket. After passing the time with a rockabilly musician, Twyla made up her mind that Music City Nashville was her destination.

The Ernest Tubb Record Shop on lower Broadway, longtime home of the Midnight Jamboree, is her first stop and where she encounters Chet Wilton. Older by several years, only child Chet has skated through life on his dazzlingly good looks, and abundant charm combined with his powerfully influential parents’ ample wealth. 

They own one of the larger estates in Belle Meade near the Cheekwood Estate and Gardens formerly owned by the Maxwell House Coffee family. His parents contributed a massive endowment to “qualify” his enrollment in Vanderbilt University and have financially supported his musical ambitions despite his patently limited talents. 

Chet fronts a band of session musicians who only play covers. His fiancé Lorelei Ray has ambitions to be a dark-haired Dolly Parton but lacks her talents. She began singing and entering beauty pageants beginning very early in childhood reaching her pinnacle at age 22 by winning the Miss Kentucky contest. This pair has plenty of moxie but lacks Twyla’s genuine talent. 

Chet introduces her to Open Mic Nights at Irma’s. From there she secures a place to stay and a housekeeping/childcare job with Mimi, a former sound engineer and producer. It wasn’t hard for this naïve girl to fall hard for Chet but a night out goes horribly wrong and he ends up dead. She wrote a song about that dreadful incident and just once felt compelled to sing it publicly onstage at Irma’s. Soon after, she is stunned to hear a newly released single of her stolen tune receiving airplay.

Bone-Chilling Crime Novel

In this bone-chilling crime novel, Twyla Higgins is a young woman long dominated by a controlling mother and not a stereotypical “good girl gone bad”. Enduring relentless verbal abuse and ridicule throughout her childhood and adolescence left her stunted, frustrated, and thwarted with deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy and the conviction she is unworthy. 

Little wonder when her too-gorgeous-to-be-true boyfriend and first lover, a manipulative compulsive liar, momentarily attacks her, she snaps like a rubber band stretched well beyond its limits. Temporarily blinded to reason and driven by years of bottled-up rage, she struck back.  

Twyla’s defensible crime haunts her unmercifully, exacerbated by the oft-preached images of hellfire and brimstone that have leached into her bones. When the case unravels and she is identified, the burning desire to reclaim her song combines with her innate honesty to ironically trigger her unjust punishment. 

Note that this long introduction is deceptive as it tells you little about the substance of this must-read novel. There are so many layers to peel back as readers delve into The Last Verse, a compulsively addictive novel and most unusual murder mystery.

Caroline Frost has proven herself to be a compelling storyteller joining the ranks of Sharyn McCrumb, Dorothy Allison and Karin Slaughter among a myriad of others. The Last Verse is set in urban Nashville but much has changed in this glitzy glamorous city of skyscrapers on the Cumberland River since 1977 when it was roughly one-fifth its current size and retained an intimate, rustic charm. 

Musicians, singers and songwriters continue to flock to this vibrant music industry mecca dreaming of stardom. Lower Broadway and Printers Alley still boast the highest concentration of live performances with music pouring out of nearly every venue. Street musicians vie for spots on each corner 7 nights per week playing their hearts out for tips. Nashville is no longer affordable for many. Belmont University, a prestigious Christian liberal arts college, offers degrees in musical technology, courses in entertainment contract law and agency management as well as the performing arts. This beautiful Tennessee belle of a city has, in the opinion of many, given way to corporate businesses earning the moniker “Manhattan of the South.”   

As songwriter/singer Laura Nyro wrote in Stoney End for her 1967 debut album, “I was raised on the Good Book Jesus, but I read between the lines” is applicable for fictional character Twyla Higgins for whom readers will have great sympathy.