THE TALL TALES OF FENDER LEE

A small-town musician’s life gets exciting following the appearance of a stranger in this debut SF novella.

New Mexico, 1959. Fender Lee is a “master mechanic, guitar virtuoso and twenty-two year old ex-con” who works at the Last Chance service station in a small desert town. It isn’t as remote as it sounds. In the last year, Fender has waited on Howard Hughes and Johnny Cash, both of whom offered him jobs if he ever ends up leaving the station. But he would prefer not to move on so he can figure out a way to win the heart of Ruby, the waitress at the nearby Bluebird Diner. Then an odd, destructive storm rolls into town and, with it, an unusual visitor: a man from back East called Leon Green, who says he has come to “explore the desert” and “meet some Indians.” Fender soon forms a band with Leon and another friend, playing shows for the adoring teens at the Bluebird and finally gaining the attention of Ruby. Fender is concerned about incurring the wrath of Chigger, his rival for Ruby’s affections. But when Chigger suddenly disappears, it presents Fender with a new mystery to solve. Couey’s prose is neat and leisurely, capturing the rhythms of the small, mid-20th-century desert town: “On Saturday night, the crowd spills out the door. It looks like every teenager for fifty miles around has turned up. There is hardly room for anyone to move much less dance. Fender and Stringbean have a quick consultation then together start putting tables on top of others.” The author explains in her introductory note that the tale is inspired by the episodic television of the ’50s, and she manages to capture that feel exactly. The book’s novella length contributes to the sense of an enclosed story. The narrative is fairly episodic, but it picks up in the second half once the more speculative elements of the plot begin to emerge. Though rather straightforward in some ways, Fender’s tale should please those who share Couey’s nostalgia for an earlier era in American storytelling.

A pleasing pastiche of ’50s genre and anthology TV.