Chinaberry

You can listen to my review of Chinaberry by James Still(edited by Silas House) on WVXU's Around Cincinnati archives.

New this spring from The University Press of Kentucky is James Still's final masterpiece, Chinaberry, edited by Silas House. Celebrated as the "Dean of Appalachian Literature," Still--a novelist, poet, short story writer and folklorist--spanned nearly two-thirds of the 20th Century in his career. At his death in 2001, he was actively working on Chinaberry which takes its title from a Texas ranch that is the backdrop for the story. Still's friends and family approached best-selling novelist. Silas House (who is also the current NEH Chair of Appalachian Studies at Berea College in Berea, KY) with the task of piecing together the papers and notes Still had stored for years in a broken leather briefcase. In a beautifully written introduction, House describes the process of editing the work while remaining true to the author's intention for plot, theme, tone and syntax. House addresses the musical craft contained in a particular sentence in this way:

"A reader could sing this line aloud if she took a notion and all the while feel the heat of the Texas sun on her neck, smell the corn baking in the fields, and see the limp leaves on the trees. A whole way of life packed into one rhythmic and lovely sentence."

The story itself, told by a small-for-his-age narrator, is both engaging and curious, and might--as the afterword by Carol Boggus notes--be at least partially autobiographical. A thirteen-year-old boy travels to Texas with his temporary guardian, Ernest, and a pair of pranksters dubbed "The Knuckleheads" for their endless mischief. It is the boy's father's wish that he experience Texas for the summer.

As the traveling companions seek employment picking cotton, the boy is quickly swept off to a cattle ranch where the owners live in the shadow of a child's death. The boy spends the next several months living with ranchers, Lurie and Anson Winters, trying to unravel the mysteries of Chinaberry's complex inhabitants and their longings.

In fact, while one of the major themes of the novel seems to be nature of memory, another important theme examines the idea of longing: the boy for his home, the Winters for a child, Lurie for a unique place in her husband's heart, Anson for his lost baby, and even the narrator's father for his beloved Texas. In their leaning toward these aching spaces in their lives, the characters cause the reader to consider the durable human spirit.

"Throughout my editing of this manuscript," says Silas House in the introduction, "it seemed very clear to me that Mr. Still wanted, more than anything, to tell the truth in this book while also leaving some mystery behind. The truth, of course is the human condition, and conveying it is a tall order for any writer. That's exactly what the haunting ending does."

Chinaberry renders the epic flavor of Texas in the early 20th Century with an artistry that places the reader in each savory second of the narrative. In the afterward, Carol Boggus weighs in on the autobiographical links to the work with this comment,:

"Whether Chinaberry is mostly fact or fiction, the result is indisputable,a beautiful, but haunting tale, a simple but complicated situation, an adventure taking a real Alabama boy into a fantasy world in Texas, then sending him back home again, changed forever."

The reader, too, is changed by these characters and their longings in their time and their place "where half the world was sky."

You can find a link to Chinaberry by James Still, edited by Silas House at WVXU.org.

Eli the Good--a review

(This review aired on WVXU's Around Cincinnati on March 14, 2010. Check links to the right of this blog to listen to the review.)

Eli the Good, the fourth novel by Kentucky’s favorite son, Silas House, is shelved as a work of young adult literature. But the story and scope of the novel transcend this label, as House frames the events of America’s Bicentennial through the 10-year-old eyes of Eli Book. Themes like the power of friendship, the lingering effects of war, self-acceptance, and love of family--even in the face of stark disagreement--lift this account of the summer of 1976 to the level of the 1930s as decribed by Scout Finch( in To Kill a Mockingbird) or Buddy (in “A Christmas Memory.”)

In the spring of 2009, I attended one of House’s writing workshops where he shared his notion of the essential ingredients of story. A good story, according to him, must have both a mystery and a love story. By his own yard stick, House creates a memorable character in Eli, who eavesdrops his way around the shadowy adult mysteries of the Book household discovering the hidden love stories that might keep his family from flying apart.

Mysteries abound from the onset. Why has Eli’s free-spirited Aunt Nell returned to the family? What ancient disagreement with his sister still nags at Stanton Book’s heart? Why does Stanton wake the family with his screaming? And why does Eli’s sister, Josie, goad her parents at every turn? Eli hides under tables, risks the spidery space beneath the porch, and hangs in the hallways, hoping to piece together clues from the adult conversations. When the clues tantalize, but don’t quite add up, he enlists his best friend and neighbor, Edie, to help him plunder his father’s letters home from Viet Nam. The answers aren’t quite what Eli expects.

The love stories in this novel are complex and beautiful. Part of Eli’s yearning stems from the overt devotion he witnesses in his parents’ love for each other. He sometimes feels invisible to them as they exchange meaningful gazes and brush each other’s hands. Another love story exists between Loretta Book and her sister-in-law, Nell, as they revel in each other’s sisterly company and dance in the rain together. And yet another love story finds best friends Edie and Eli, confiding secrets and sharing their love of nature, in the easy pre-dawn of adolescence while Eli’s sister, Josie, suffers the pouty, full-blown drama of teenage love and rebellion.

House underscores the mounting tensions for the characters with frequent allusions to the music of the time. Eli and his mother dance to Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl,” Nell sings Dylan snippets sadly from the porch swing and advises the ever-skeptical Josie about which Dylan tunes will “rip your guts out,” and later Nell gives Eli the title, “Mother Nature’s Son,” a song she urges Stanton to play on the Gibson while she sings. Following this song, an explosive argument foreshadows that some mysteries will soon be laid bare for the Book family.

As usual, the characters in a House novel are presented in precise, intimate detail--from Eli’s adoration of his mother’s easy, natural beauty at the Fourth of July celebration to his horror at seeing nothing behind his father’s war-traumatized eyes when Eli casually horseplays in a thunderstorm. Important, lyrical scenes develop in nature, backed by bird call, witnessed by foxes and silent beech trees. When darkness falls, House treats us to characters’ favorite words, like “gloaming.”

“Eli the Good” is the title Nell confers upon her struggling young nephew to start him on his path to identity. Kings titled “the Good” rather than “the Great” were much more likely to be kind to their people, she explains. As she dubs him king of his backyard, the reader knows she is hoping he will grow up to be a kind man, able to face the cruelties of the world without becoming part of them. I was sorry to conclude my visit with the Books. Their mysteries and love stories--in the hands of Silas House’s poetic and musical craft--add up to one good story.