The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

Horrified, Patricia springs into action, hitting James with one of Korey’s cleats. She manages to get him off her daughter, but after detaching himself, he throws Patricia against the wall. Blue wakes up and starts down the hall, but Patricia tells him to go back to bed. James flees. Patricia helps Korey, who is bleeding on the bed. From the bruises on Korey’s thigh, Patricia is sickened to realize that this is not the first time James has attacked her. She laments that she’d “been so obsessed with the children in Six Mile and Blue that she hadn’t seen the danger to Korey” (337).

The following day, James calls Patricia. He claims that his relationship with Korey is consensual: For him, it’s a process similar to dialysis, and for Korey, it feels good. Patricia realizes that James wants her family and won’t stop until he has it. At the end of the call, James tells Patricia he found the driver’s license she planted in his car. Feeling hopeless and alone, she phones Mrs. Greene and invites her to book club.

The book club meeting is held at the hospital so Slick can still participate. Patricia tells the group that James Harris is a vampire, and Slick admits that she is in the hospital because he raped her. Patricia passes around a photograph of Korey’s leg, which has the same marks that were found on Mrs. Savage and Destiny Taylor and that the police dismissed as drug-related.

While some in the group believe Patricia, Grace can’t bring herself to commit to bringing down James Harris. Furious, Mrs. Greene asks Grace, “Am I trash to you?” (349), and tries to shame her into helping: “What are you made of, Mrs. Cavanaugh, that lets you walk away from your friends?’’ (350). Grace hurriedly leaves the room, but the rest of the women agree to kill James. His weakness is that he is alone, while they have each other.

To get Korey to safety, Patricia tells Carter that Korey needs to go to drug rehab. Meanwhile, James is impatient to take over Patricia’s family. He gives her 10 days, and Patricia realizes that to protect Korey, she is going to have to give James what he’s wanted all along: herself. She dons a sexy black dress and tells James she wants to see him.

As she tries to seduce James, he erupts in laughter. Mocking her, he brags about how easily he has manipulated this town of stupid Southerners. When Patricia begs James to spare Korey and to take her instead, he agrees to spare Korey for a year. He does promise to kill Carter and take Blue. He then takes Patricia up to the bedroom, tells her to strip, lies on top of her, and then bites her.

Kitty, Maryellen, and Mrs. Greene have been parked in the driveway, waiting. They enter the house and find James Harris sucking Patricia’s blood in bed. Kitty hits him on the side of the head with a baseball bat and the sudden blow causes James Harris to tear open Patricia’s leg. The women attack, with Kitty doing most of the fighting. After they get James on the ground, Kitty stabs him in the neck until “his body went slack” (373). This does not kill him, but the wound is significant.

The three women get James Harris into the bathtub, aware that Patricia may bleed out if they don’t hurry. James tempts them with power and wisdom, pleading for them not to kill someone who has the key to immortality. Maryellen, Kitty, and Mrs. Greene ignore him and saw his body into pieces, using a diagram that makes this dismemberment “just like dressing a deer” (379). The bathroom and bedroom are a bloody mess, and they are about to clean it up when the doorbell rings downstairs.

Grace is at the door. She has come to help after all. The women wonder what to do with the body. Maryellen mentions Stuhr’s, the funeral home she works for, and Grace suggests they cremate the remains in two parts, leaving “his head in one [urn] and the rest of his remains in the other” (386), and then alter the funeral home’s records to cover their tracks. Grace then ushers the others out the door so she and Mrs. Greene, who have “been cleaning up after men [their] entire lives” (387) can get rid of the blood that cakes the walls and floors the house. When Patricia gets a call that the other women successfully disposed of the remains, she is overwhelmed with relief. Grace comforts Patricia and reads to her as she falls asleep.

Patricia is home, healing from James’s bite. She sees Miss Mary’s ghost one last time. When Carter worries about the missing James, Patricia tells him she wants a divorce. 

Slick isn’t getting any better in the hospital. Members of the book club take turns staying with her until she passes away, so that she is never alone at the end. 

The Campbells’ dog Ragtag has a brain tumor and isn’t likely to live much longer. Blue pleads with his parents to bring Korey home for the dog’s final days. Patricia agrees, keeping “her distance while Blue and Korey hung all over Ragtag that weekend, soothing him when he barked at things that weren’t there” (396). Ragtag dies surrounded by his family. The caring way in which the children treat Ragtag when he loses his mind shows Patricia that they will also take care of Patricia in her old age, comforting her.

Patricia and Carter tell their kids about the divorce, and to both parents’ surprise, Korey and Blue choose to live with Patricia over Carter.