In A Temple of Trees by Suzanne Hudson is refreshing and intelligent in the author’s refusal to bow to the namby-pamby literary review chorus. This chorus is sung in praise of novels that shade all the characters with goodness and badness, incorporating review buzzwords such as compassionate and humanizing without any justification for the normative value of that authorial inclination (other than not to offend the purchasing public.) Praise of a literary author’s “compassion” toward humanity is already a cliché and is close to becoming a pandemic love-fest, in which no humans—fictional or otherwise—are ever condemned or ever to blame because, hey, we should recognize there’s an evil in all of us and while we’re at it, please pass the syrupy milk of human kindness.

Thank god or the muse—take your pick—for Suzanne Hudson. Her novel, In A Temple of Trees, a break from her long writing hiatus, features bad characters. Meaning, characters that behave badly, characters that are more flawed than good and characters that are evil. Meaning, also, the author has shrugged off the contemporary literary requirement that novels should underscore humanity and limn motivations in the socio-economic context of youth and while we’re at it, what about that relationships with mother?

Whatever. And what a relief that this talented Southern woman has produced a good fire and brimstone type fiction that doesn’t shirk from judging who’s a sinner and who’s a saint. Temple contains villains and good people and saves plenty of nuance for the ones in between. For nuance, Suzanne Hudson focuses primarily on the life of Cecil Durgin, a man who struggles with fidelity toward his wife but who also acts out of conviction in his efforts to bring out the black vote for local causes.

Cecil’s story begins in Alabamian timber baron Big John McCormick’s deer camp. For those unfamiliar with Southern male hunting rituals, a “deer camp” is usually a cabin tucked deep into the woods outfitted with a card table, latrine, kitchen and in these days, an audio-video system to help pass the time when not crouched in a deer blind. Befitting the era and setting of the early parts of Temple, Big John’s buddies come to the camp prepared with dogs, guns and liquor. And of course, the help. The help consists of an older black man who cooks and a “mixed” boy named Cecil Durgin. Of uncertain paternity, Cecil has been adopted by a local couple in which the wife, Miss Sophie Price, is Jewish. After spying on the sex games between the white adult hunters and the white women hired for the purpose, Cecil discovers her dead body and informs Big John. Miss Charity’s death will metaphorically and literally haunt Cecil throughout his adulthood.

Cecil’s adulthood is set in 1990, again in Three Breezes, Alabama. He is married, his children have grown and left. Cecil owns the radio station his adoptive father had operated. Cecil’s admonitions to his listeners are the source of political trouble for the good ole’ boys running Big John McCormick’s timber trust. Hudson manufactures the local political intrigue and jockeying deftly, framing out conflict with specific scenes to illustrate the persistence of small-town political muscle jobs that can carry large financial consequence.

Concurrent with Cecil’s marital and potentially dangerous political dilemma are the moral struggles of other characters including Sophie Price, his wife, Earline and his long-time friend, a white woman named Shug who is part-heir to the timber fortune. Cecil’s mistress, a velvet-throated crooner who calls herself Honey, falls into misadventure and the tale of her ordeal is both screamingly funny and grim. Even the ghost of the dead young woman makes appearances, tempering the scenes with reminders that Cecil’s past walks the walk with his present.

Hudson writes local color and details that make her “bad” characters easy—if not fun—to imagine. Included in the raft of good ole’ boys are Big John’s hunting contingent (among them a friend and confidant who had relations with his daughter,) Shug’s husband and a comic-relief duo of brother criminals. Hudson’s exceptional at assigning identity to each of the characters. Though all white and all bad, we never confuse the embezzler with the kidnapper, the hinted-at-gay good ole’ boy with the waspy, porn-loving, Christian financial manager.

Temple doesn’t shrink from the elephant in the room. Race and issues of racial paternity command as much stage time as the characters and dramatic conflict. Notions of family and friendship are strained over the facts of Cecil’s paternity; both his black and white families are reluctant to tell what they know as truth. Bitterness runs deep on both sides of the white and black family branches.

If Temple has any soft spots, it lies in Hudson’s dedication to preserving dialect and speech mannerisms. Though accuracy in depiction has always been a strong suit of Southern writers, she opens herself to potential criticism that she’s writing the “stock” evil white man or the “cliché” rich, drunken and imperious Southern widow. I didn’t find the characterizations to be a problem, but that’s probably because I’ve spent too much time arguing with Northern literary critics that despite their claims of hunters and belles being “caricatures,” people in the South…really…do….talk…like…that. And act like that too.

Readers should enjoy Hudson’s novel, if not only for the unraveling of its decades-long mystery but for a tour through the woods of the South, where they’ll encounter “The faint smell of must wool, cedar-chipped smoke, and sticky sap….”

And also bad guys. No-possibility-of-compassion-or-humanizing bad guys.