Grab the Lapels

Just Before Daybreak by Audrey Couloumbis

This is Book #1 in the 13 Books of Fall.

There is a Facebook group called Retro Horror Paperback Art, and you see some of that great old cover art that Grady Hendrix raves about in his nonfiction book called Paperbacks from Hell. I get so jealous of books people in the group find, but after one Saturday hopping from Goodwill to Goodwill (it was a 50% off Saturday), I came home with a small armload of mass-market paperback horror novels that I’m sure are out of print. One book was Just Before Daybreak by Audrey Couloumbis. Just look at that creepy cover!

The novel starts with Allie on her maternal grandparents’ farm where she has fun with her cousin Tucker and enjoys watching all her uncles work hard and play hard. Just turned thirteen, Allie overhears her young uncles talking about women, and while we know the guys are on the prowl for women friends, Allie is just getting the gist. We learn her uncles are all about the same age because they’re not really related to her; the grandparents are good about adopting any orphan who shows up. After a terrible accident, Allie’s mom picks her up to visit Allie’s paternal grandparents.

Allie’s dad isn’t in the picture much. He’s a performer in a circus, I think, though he’s described as being a world-travelling elite with money that he throws in Allie’s mom’s face. Either way, he has almost no time for Allie, but when they all gather at his parents’ for his irregular visit, he stops in to announce that his new lady is pregnant. Wanting to be part of her father’s life, Allie offers to go with them on the road and care for the baby, but her dad turns her down, stating moms want to be with their babies.

Finally, Allie is home with her mother, step-father, and half-sister (probably under age two). Now, the novel really begins, which left me wondering what all that lead up was for. Author Audrey Couloumbis hints that Allie’s step-father is lusting after her, much the way Beverly’s father from the novel It by Stephen King talks about his daughter. You get that jealousy because now Allie’s thirteen, boys will come around, and Allie’s step-father can’t have that. I was terrified the entire novel, wondering what would come of this leering.

When Allie is sitting on her porch and drawing, sixteen-year-old Nate comes over and gives unsolicited advice on her artwork. He means no harm; the two of them start drawing together, improving together, until the step-father threatens Nate and runs him off. Couloumbis writes the step-father as a convincing drunk, swaying from loving father figure to crying victim in need of help to abusive husband. I will warn you there is a lot of domestic violence in Just Before Daybreak, such that it reminded me of Roddy Doyle’s novella The Woman Who Walked into Doors. Allie’s mother forgives her husband every time he’s sober for two seconds and says he’s sick when he’s drunk. She blames it largely on his unemployment, though when he is hired, he is soon fired for his behavior and being inebriated on the job.

At school, rumors fly around that Allie is promiscuous because she writes stories about things she’s learned about sex from her just-as-inexperienced friends and more experienced cousins. When she misses school for an extended period (I won’t spoil it), the stories kept safe in her locker are circulated around the student body after a fellow classmate who was given the locker safe number to retrieve Allie’s school books sees the stories and shares them. Meanwhile, Allie is in love with Nate and he with her, but he’s sixteen and she’s thirteen, meaning their readiness for grown-up activities might as well be lifetimes apart. Couloumbis handles the young teens’ questions, conversations, and exploration into sexuality kindly for the most part.

Just Before Daybreak has a harrowing ending in which I thought more would be lost than was, and this was the point at which I circled back to those first eighty pages of grandparent visits. Everyone seems to know how the step-father is: an obvious drunk, a jealous husband, and quick to anger. And yet, the maternal grandparents who adopted every kid who showed up didn’t step in and help Allie. The paternal grandparents, who had the space for Allie to live with them, who missed their son terribly, could have helped. But everyone knew and watched and let it happen, especially the mother, who threatens Allie to keep her mouth shut about what goes on at home. It now stings to think about Allie’s father saying mothers want to be with their babies, but in Allie’s case, at what cost?

This is a tricky novel to recommend to anyone because there is domestic violence, sexual content, and it is extremely tense.

19 comments

  1. “tranquil rural America.” Love that description. I’m getting that same kind of sense of horror driving around my rural area and looking at all the Trump signs.

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    • After several days of family activities I’ve forgotten what I was going to say, but it was something about grandparents caring for grandchildren. We had one friend who has prime responsibility for his grandson, and his wife died at 59 early on when the grandchild was a toddler. Our friend has had a torrid time with a difficult child, whose parents have been completely irresponsible. I can’t imagine doing what he has done. The subject matter wouldn’t turn me off but that it’s done in the horror genre would. I an do misery but not suspense and tense!

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      • I keep reading anecdotal evidence online that students are utterly out of control, poorly behaved, can’t read, etc. If I believe what I read, I would feel hopeless. Of course, no one gets online to sing praises anymore, so it’s a bit of an echo chamber. Also, when I started teaching in 2007 they were saying kids didn’t read. After smart phones were invited, I was told kids would read even less. I think in America we just need to know that our culture does not value education in general, and we’re more impressed by a kid with an after school job than one who reads.

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        • I’ve just read an article about how students can’t read long novels anymore. How once they’d read three novels a week and now it’s one a week! Then a book review mag publisher says you can’t generalise. I reckon people have been doomsaying since the world began… there’s some truth always but just because there are more options. People find their metier I think. I guess valuing education is a bit class-related? At least I think it is here?

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  4. My house is full of SF paperbacks with 1960s covers (which weren’t ‘retro’ when I bought them), but no horror that I can think of or I’d send it to you. The story which you tell above is horrible but I wouldn’t have thought it was horror.

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    • You know, it didn’t read like what I expect of horror except the anticipation of harm part. That’s a big tension creator in slasher movies, for example, so once someone IS killed, the audience often laughs. Here, I was worried for the character’s safety constantly.

      I’ll bet those old SF covers are amazing.

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  5. That cover with the hook reminds me of those urban legends where a man with a hook attacks kids making out in cars. The sort that act as a thinly veiled threat against any sort of sexual promiscuity. Would you describe this as a horror book? Or is the horror the domestic fear that Allie has to endure?

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    • I thought of the hook from the movie I Know What You Did Last Summer! Almost all slashers are thinly veiled plots about punishing teens for having sex, drinking, and using drugs, so I never thought about how the hook might suggest a link to that same theme. Truly, the step-father is obsessed with Allie’s virginity but also walking in on her in the bathtub, etc.

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  6. Oh I had a cringing face the entire time I read this, because you just KNOW bad things are going to happen, it’s going to be dark, it’s going to be awful, and it’s even worse that kids are involved. I think I need more supernatural horror, this seems just to ‘real’ for me to enjoy reading it

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  8. Ah, I haven’t seen that one so I didn’t make that connection. I did go to summer camp though so I’ve heard lots of urban legends! And I took a great sociology class in high school where we learned to dissect those legends. Our modern obsession with virginity is super weird but it being her stepfather here is extra gross and scary.

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