Some readers have already told Morris Smith they don’t really care for the main character of her new book, “Better Than Jail.”

That’s all right with her.

“I’m not big on writing likable characters,” Smith says. “I would rather write a flawed character than a likable character.”

Luckily, Oris’ flaws make him interesting, and he isn’t completely dislikeable. In his own peculiar way, the protagonist of “Better Than Jail” is likeable enough.

Oris Benton is a 70-year-old printer, once very successful but now facing the loss of his business in a changing world. Oris’ world is New Orleans. A veneer of arrogance has kept Oris from fully knowing his city. He’s been more comfortable putting on patrician airs seated atop his horse than getting to know the family and employees around him. He’s more comfortable believing his white beard makes him something of a re-incarnated Robert E. Lee rather than a member of a community.

Life had already given Oris some hard knocks: The loss of a close friend, the devastating loss of a favored grandson. On turning 70, Oris faces a series of trials which change his self comparisons from the grand Confederate general to the biblical Job.

Rather than face this series of calamities with the dignity of Lee at Appomattox or Job’s undying devotion to God, Oris descends into self-pity and depression.

That’s the essential story behind Morris Smith’s “Better Than Jail.” It may not sound like a comedy, but Smith’s first novel teems with comic elements. Though she didn’t create Oris to be likeable, even Smith admits the character has wit. He says funny things. But Smith also places Oris into funny situations, such as this once arrogant man wheedling his way into a Mardi Gras parade by bribing a child. 

“You get the feeling that he’s lived the type of life that he’s due a big come-uppance,” Smith says, and that come-uppance is the hand she deals Oris.

Some readers have already asked her why she lets Oris go crazy, but he doesn’t really lose his mind. Oris loses his bearings. His world has changed. He not only doesn’t know where to stand in it, but how to stand in it.

“He’s not really crazy,” Smith says. “I see him as very upset and obsessive. But not crazy.”

She loosely based Oris on an acquaintance she knew living in New Orleans. Smith spent 14 years living in New Orleans, long enough to make the city come alive in “Better Than Jail” but not as long as it took to write this novel.

Morris Smith grew up in Valdosta, attending Valdosta High School. Teaching English and physical education, she taught in American public schools but also in U.S. Department of Defense schools in Italy, the Philippines, and Germany.

By middle age, she wanted something new in her life, a new field. She chose social work. She studied at Tulane and lived several years in New Orleans, before finding her way back home to Valdosta in 1990.

Moving from the uniform culture of Germany to the loose-knit society of New Orleans was not an easy transition, Smith says.