The Last First Kiss by Walter Bennett | Lystra Books; September 14

A vacation home on the North Carolina coast is the setting for Walter Bennett’s contemplative second work of fiction, The Last First Kiss.

The novel’s protagonist, Ace Sinclair, is in his mid-70s and retired from law practice in Raleigh. His wife died about ten years ago. As the book begins, Ace and his high school sweetheart, J’nelle Reade, are back in touch—and she’s coming for a visit. The book unfolds over the course of four days.

“Who has not dreamed of it?” author Lee Smith writes in a blurb for the book, “Here is the story of an American generation, the ’60s, of all our lost young loves, and a brilliant meditation on the passing and relevance of time.”

For Ace and J’nelle, the relative remoteness of the Outer Banks—where, Bennett says, “there’s a sense that you’re disconnected from the continental United States”—could be the perfect place to rekindle a romance. But there’s also emotional risk in such a reunion: Why stir up the past and so many memories, both good and bad? On top of that, a hurricane is on its way.

“You’re on a strip of land that is hugely vulnerable,” says Bennett. “The sea is on both sides of you, the sky is huge, the wind is stronger. You feel out there. Whether they want to be or not, Ace and J’nelle are ‘out there’ too in old age and whatever is coming toward them—and that could be a hurricane or the vicissitudes of life.”

Bennett is from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Before retiring, he was a trial lawyer, a District Court Judge in Charlotte, and a Professor of Law at UNC-Chapel Hill.

His first novel, Leaving Tuscaloosa, was published in 2012. A story of racial conflict in 1960s Alabama, it received the Alabama Author’s Award and was a finalist for both the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and the Crook’s Corner Book Prize for debut novels set in the American South.

The INDY recently discussed The Last First Kiss with Bennett while he was staying at his vacation home in Bozeman, Montana.

INDY WEEK: How did the title of the new book, The Last First Kiss, come to you?

BENNETT: It was after I’d gotten into the book and realized what the story was going to be about: the passage of time, recapturing dreams of youth, or the impossibility of that. This is Ace and J’nelle’s last chance to create the sensation that they had when they were in their youth and fell in love. I guess it’s also the last chance for a first kiss. Not absolutely the last chance—but statistically it probably is. My wife, Betsy, warned me that the title sounds too much like the title of a traditional romance novel. Perhaps, but once I got that title in my head, nothing else seemed to work as well.

I got the impression at the beginning of The Last First Kiss that Ace was stuck.

Yes, that’s exactly the word I would use. And I think he would have stayed stuck if something hadn’t happened. This woman comes into his life who clearly was very bright and two steps ahead of him when they were younger, and to my mind still is, and stirs things up.

I think relationships do have a way of shaking up a person. I think, in part, this book is saying it’s a good thing to be shook up.

Yes, I think so. I think it’s harder to do that when you’re older. I’ll be 78 in a few days. There’s something that doesn’t want to be shook up anymore. Let’s just put the landing gear down and coast on in, now. Ace and J’nelle are desperate in a way that they don’t know. They are both fraught with a great deal of sadness and feelings of loss.

The Last First Kiss is, in part, about memory and how faulty it is. I can imagine that the issue of faulty memory has been on your mind your whole career as a lawyer and judge.

It has. Not only memory in the sense of going back and trying to understand recaptured memories that you cherish or fear—but what we do with memories.

Along those lines, Ace and J’nelle are struggling with the past, trying to make sense of it. Why is it important for them to know why their relationship from 60 years ago ended?

I think it’s important for Ace and his understanding of himself to know that his own ideas of why it might have ended are not correct and that there’s another version which involves her life and her interests and wants and needs and so forth that he was not aware of at the time. That’s part of a universal problem of youth that persists to old age—not really seeing what’s going on with other people.

You transitioned from lawyer and judge to fiction writer. Was that freeing for you personally and creatively?

I never thought of it in terms of being freeing. I guess it was. It was a very tough process because I had learned to think in one way as a lawyer, which is a very linear progression usually. If you’re a lawyer you’re trying to make a story fit a preconceived version that you want the judge or jury to see. I’m talking about trial lawyers. It’s almost a deductive process, a narrowing process to get it into focus. If you’re a judge, you’re trying to make all that very clear— take different versions and clarify it into a story that you accept or can go with. Frequently you don’t really believe or know what to believe. But with fiction, you’re going in the opposite direction to find truth. You’re opening yourself to everything that you can, and you let the creative mind come up with all those options and ideas.

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