Phillip DePoy's "December's Thorn"

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Phillip DePoy is the author of a number of mysteries, including the Edgar Award winning play Easy. He has published short fiction, poetry, and criticism in Story, The Southern Poetry Review, Xanadu, and Yankee, among other magazines. As a folklorist, Depoy has worked with Joseph Campbell and John Burrison. He is currently the director of the theatre program at Clayton State University.

DePoy's Fever Devilin novels include The Drifter's Wheel and A Corpse’s Nightmare.

Here DePoy shares some ideas for casting an adaptation of December's Thorn, the 7th of seven Fever Devilin novels:

Who doesn’t play this game? The trouble is, no two people ever have the same opinions. I love Gregory Peck’s Ahab. Plenty of other people hate it. And I have a genuine difficulty with December's Thorn (and all the Fever Devilin novels) in that I have no idea who should play Fever Devilin, the main character. I do, however, have lots of opinions about the other characters.

My first choice for Issie, the mysterious ghost-bride, would be Dakota Fanning. I get that she’s a little young, but she’s always been older than her age, she’s a great actor, and she’s from Georgia. I think that Sheriff Skidmore Needle ought to be played by Walton Goggins (yes, Boyd Crowder on Justified)—a perfect combination of rural sensibilities and intelligence; also raised in Georgia. The rugby-playing Shakespeare scholar, Andrews, might be Hugh Grant, don’t you think? Drew Barrymore should play Dr. Ceri Nelson because she has the perfect sense of humor for it. As to Fever’s long-time fiancé Lucinda Foxe, why wouldn’t Renée Zellweger be great?

Now for the main character, the first-person narrator, many people have made suggestions ranging from a young (The Night of the Hunter) Robert Mitchum (alas, dead) to the relatively British Clive Owen (alas, British). Who’s haunted enough to be Fever; who’s got one foot in this world and the other in the next? The Grapes of Wrath Henry Fonda? The Steppenwolf Max Von Sydow—or is he too Scandanavian? How about Shoot the Piano Player’s Charles Aznavour? Too French? I have no idea.

Learn more about the book and author at Phillip DePoy's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Drifter's Wheel.

The Page 69 Test: A Corpse's Nightmare.

The Page 69 Test: December's Thorn.

--Marshal Zeringue