Kentucky Folktales

I was crossing a hot college parking lot in Tennessee, on my way to a CREATE Conference, when a man came up along side me to introduce himself as a storyteller from New Mexico. "What about you?'  he asked me, as we kept up the brisk pace toward the opening session. "I'm a songwriter and singer from Kentucky," I countered. "Kentucky!" He seemed delighted.  "Then you must know Mary Hamilton."

This wasn't my first experience with a storyteller from another state assuming that we all know Mary Hamilton. She is that well-known among storytellers. So, when her first book from the University of Kentucky Press, Kentucky Folktales: Revealing Stories, Truths, and Outright Lies, was published this month, I was only too happy to give it a read.

The fact is, I have known Mary Hamilton since around 1999, when she and my trio Raison D'Etre were both juried into Kentucky's Performing Arts Directory.  Plus she and I have spent many summer training sessions together as part of Kentucky's Teaching Artist Roster. Mary is well-respected in the storytelling world and was instrumental in organizing Kentucky's Storytelling Association. I suspected her book would be more than just a collection of tales.

And, I was right.  The book offers a personal introduction to Mary, who openly proclaims herself as "a professional storyteller since 1983."  Following each of the 26 tales in the collection is an essay that discusses either variations and origin of the story--many gleaned from Mary's 2010 Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship at Berea--or some description of how Mary adapted the tale to fit her way of telling.  Truly, the book offers a glimpse into the artistry of the teller.

That Mary began her volume with scary tales could not have pleased me more. Stories like "Stormwalker," "Promises to Keep," and "The Blue Light" are eerie enough to hold a reader's interest on their own. But, the essays following each story explain how Mary uses song, repetition, and various hand motions to add to each tale's power. She also shares with the reader where she encountered each story and the process she used to make the tale part of her repertoire.

It would be hard to pick out favorites from this collection, but I especially enjoyed the one entitled "Some Dog" from the section entitled "Tall Tales and Outright Lies." Anybody who's had a particularly wonderful dog will appreciate the embellished deeds of this hound. And the trick tale called "The Fortune Teller" has some physical humor and surprise in it that made me want to try telling the story to an unsuspecting family member. Mary credits a Kentucky middle school teacher with telling this story to her for the first time. She includes the trick story in the "More Kentucky Folktales" section.

Another great story from the "More Kentucky Folktales" section is "Rawhead and Bloody Bones."  Despite it's less than savory title, the story has some enchanting repetition passages that truly create images in the mind's eye of the two main characters' kindness and cruelty. Following the tale, Mary discusses why she decided to include certain phrases like "she acted ugly" to help the listener form the necessary images for a full understanding of motivation.

The section called "Beyond Kentucky Folktales" introduces stories that do not come from Kentucky, but since they are now being told by a Kentucky teller, will no doubt become more Kentucky-like when filtered through both her technique and her listeners. The author shares examples from India, Scotland, and Japan in this section along with her amusing stories of how she acquired and adapted each tale.

In the final section of the book, Mary Hamilton shares some family stories, including one about her when she was a baby,  and several on the theme of family mistakes. I want to share just one of these with you, so you can get the hang of how Mary's family life has been important to her becoming a storyteller:

It's called "Jeff Rides the Rides." (p.169)...

Mary Hamilton's first book--a collection of tales and her commentary on each one--is a must-have for anyone considering telling a good tale. And for those of us who mostly sit and listen, Kentucky Folktales provides some really good stories along with a little peek behind the scenes at the mind who tells them.

This review aired on the July 1st broadcast of Around Cincinnati. Listen to the entire review at this link:
Listen to the review here.

Dear Appalachia

In Dear Appalachia: Readers, Identity, and Popular Fiction Since 1878,  Assistant Professor of Appalachian Studies, Emily Satterwhite, explores the responses of readers to best-selling fiction set in the region.  Published in November 2011 by University Press of Kentucky, Dear Appalachia uses an innovative research method--that of sifting through fan mail and reviews to better understand the relationship between reader and text. Satterwhite, also a teacher of American studies and popular culture at Virginia Tech, discovers how readers have imagined the region and what purposes these imagined geographies have served for them.

Satterwhite received the Weatherford Award March 23rd at the Appalachian Studies Conference hosted by Indiana University of Pennsylvania.  This award is given for the best nonfiction book in Appalachian studies published each year. Her colleague at Virginia Tech and department chair, Anita Puckett, congratulated her at the gathering of academics by explaining, "there is no higher award for scholarship in Appalachian Studies."

This scholarly work is organized into five chapters, each dealing with best sellers during a particular historic framework, a conclusion that sums up the author's assertions, and an impressive appendix which includes a methodological essay, notes, bibliography and index.

Chapter One, entitled "Charm and Virility," offers a fascinating discussion of fan reaction to a literary surprise in the late 1800s.  When popular local color author, Charles Egbert Craddock who readers and editors alike assumed was a "strapping six-foot Tennessean," turned out to be Mary N. Murfrees, "a genteel, delicate-looking lady." the editor of The Atlantic Monthly was astonished. Satterwhite examines reviews of Murfree's work and charts fan mail from her readers to show differences in how the author was perceived by her audience. Metropolitan readers tended to construct the author of In the Tennessee Mountains as a virile, self-taught adventurer who provided a masculizing frontier for "his" readers. Murfree's writing style--even after it was well-known that she was a woman--was praised by metropolitan reviewers for its "force" and "masculinity" of style.  City dwellers during the 1800s were worried that men were too coddled by cities and looked to local color writing for something not "namby pamby," as one reviewer classified Murfree.

Fan mail from small town readers often testified to the authenticity of Murfree's jargon and the distance these small town elites felt from the quaint character of her collection.. Many of these letters were written by aspiring local color writers who saw the author as a member of their own elite circle. Satterwhite concludes that both groups of readers seemed to be drawn to the local color genre because it provided a kind of vicarious tourism to the mountains.

Chapter Two looks at the popularity of John Fox, Jr.'s The Trail of the Lonesome Pine circa 1908. Satterwhite examines two prevalent views of this book through the filters of three categories of readers: nationally identified readers, locally identified readers, and transitional readers.  A prevailing view of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine is that it promotes imperialism by painting moonshiners as inferior but redeemable. Another view holds that the author possesses "an intimate knowledge of mountain people." While Satterwhite acknowledges that she tends to agree with Fox's detractors, she investigates why the book struck a chord with so many early 20th Century readers.

She finds that nationally identified readers turned to Fox's work as an anti-modernist tonic. The books seems to celebrate mountain quaintness for these readers while nationalizing industrial intervention.  Locally identified readers saw themselves fictionalized as stereotypical buffoons and were offended. Much of Chapter Two develops an interesting theory--based on the novel's fan mail--of why this book gained tremendous popularity among migratory readers who felt ambivalence about "home" vs. "the industrial world." Fox's authenticity and the book's wide appeal seem to come from middle class readers who had sought to better themselves by leaving home, and then felt homesickness, a conflict Fox understood well from his own displacement from small town Kentucky while searching for upward mobility.

Chapter 3 entitled "Country to City" discusses the work of Harriet Simpson Arnow, in particular her two novels, Hunter's Horn and The Dollmaker.  Even though both works are characterized by Satterwhite as unlikely best sellers since they are, in her words, "long and bleak," an analysis of fan mail reveals that readers' needs were met by Arnow's authenticity. Arnow was credited by scholars as capturing an accurate vision of mountain life while attracting readers who identified with her characters, particularly the large group of Appalachian migrants who moved to the cities for work in the 1940s and 50s. Her fiction also served conventional readerly desires for authentic places, belonging and a sense of power.

Chapter 4 entitled "City to Country" examines the turbulent period of 1967-1970 and the wildly popular best sellers, Christy and Deliverance.  These two pop culture touchstones, as different as two novels can be, still continue to shape national perceptions of the Appalachian region. Fan mail indicates that both books served white, high middlebrow readers in the same way that local color fiction worked for the Gilded Age and Neo-Gilded Age audiences. These readers wanted the production of region as authentic, the construction of identity and belonging by way of geographical affiliations, and the circulation of power.

Fan mail for both books confirms that readers saw Appalachia as a distinctive world apart.  The novels provide mountaineers who relate a supposed colorful collective past for white culture through preservation of folklore and music. While Christy's 1912 pastoral setting provides a quiet place of God-fearing self-reliance, Deliverance  readers sought titillation and reassurance that Appalachia permits  the primitive to endure in the modern world.

Chapter 5 looks at the resurgence of local color writing beginning with the 1985 publication of the best-selling Lake Wobegon Days by public radio icon, Garrison Keillor. Satterwhite points to a second Gilded Age from 1985-2008, called by some scholars the Neo-Gilded Age, which shares with the first Gilded Age certain historic qualities. Among these are large gaps between rich and poor, high levels of unregulated corporate power, conspicuous degrees of consumption, influxes of immigration, and expanded U.S. activities abroad. In both the Gilded and Neo-Gilded Ages, high middlebrow readers expressed concern for loss of local cultures.

In this chapter, Satterwhite uses online reader reviews to examine how four best-selling novels set in Appalachia touch a nerve with a wide swath of readers. In particular, she looks at how At Home in Mitford, Big Stone Gap, Clay's Quilt, and Cold Mountain meet reader needs for authentic place, community, belonging and identity.

Emily Satterwhite warns in her concluding chapter of some unintended consequences of the imaginary versions of Appalachia created by readers, such as the potential to reinforce white nationalism or endorse problematic images of so-called primitives around the world.  Moving beyond traditional examinations of regional fiction, Dear Appalachia is an innovative study that reveals how narratives function in the lives of readers.

***This review aired on "Around Cincinnati" on April 29, 2012, WVXU 91.7.  You can listen to the review here:

Audio link for this review.

Blood in the Hills: A History of Violence in Appalachia

While watching a U.S. military official apologize to Afghans on the news over the unfortunate burning of copies of the Koran, I was taken aback by the characterization of the Afghan protestors as "primitive." The official seemed to be attributing the protestors' reaction to the gaffe as illogical or intrinsic-- the kind of behavior one might expect from a people who are not totally civilized.

Yet, on our own soil, areas of the United States have been characterized over our history as innately more dangerous and primitive because of their supposed isolation or cultural proclivity toward violence. In Blood in the Hills: A History of Violence in Appalachia, Bruce E. Stewart, assistant professor of history at Appalachian State, collects essays from experts in the fields of political science, history, and literature to question the supposedly innate brutality of the Appalachian people. Published in January by University Press of Kentucky, this book examines cases of violence in the mountains from the late 18th Century through the early 20th Century, making the case that violence in the hills is not isolated or inbred, but reflective of deeper problems within the United States itself.

In his introduction to the essays, Stewart shares prevalent explanations offered by early scholars and writers about the causes of violent behavior in Appalachia. Among those discussed are rugged frontier individualism caused by living in the wilderness, Scotch-Irish descent, and geographic isolation.

Arnold J. Toynbee, in his 1946 work, A Study of History, characterized the (quote) "barbarizing effect of the American frontier" (end quote) on Appalachian residents. Toynbee's explanation follows the late nineteenth century popularization by novelists, missionaries, and scholars of a violent and lawless Appalachia. Toynbee argued that mountain violence was a product of living on the frontier. Forced to live in "the wilderness" where they had to defend themselves against Native Americans, Appalachian whites were thought to have lapsed into savagery, a condition that future generations presumably failed to rise above, according to this theory.

Many early twentieth century writers, however, argued that the Appalachian mountains were peopled largely with descendants of Scotch-Irish settlers who carried with them a "border culture" that included clannish behavior, and a cultural propensity to break the law and fight to defend property. Horace Kephart wrote in 1921, "They--the Scotch-irish--are a fighting race."

Stewart cites the most popular explanation for mountain violence accepted among early scholars as geographic isolation . By the turn of the twentieth century, most writers, educators and missionaries asserted that the mountains served as physical barriers keeping civilization out. C.T. Revere wrote in 1907 that mountain people "had never come in contact with the outside world, and are amazingly ignorant of anything which happens outside their immediate neighborhood." Revere and other writers of the time supposed that this isolation resulted in a peculiar mountain culture where highlanders became "extreme individualists."

Stewart goes on to present more recent challenges to these early theories about mountain violence, including the 1978 work of Henry Shapiro, Appalachia on Our Mind. In his book, Shapiro wrote that the notion of Appalachia as out of step with the rest of America was a post-Civil War construct to make Appalachia "the other," a fictional place filled with natural beauty and populated with backward people who did not embrace progress. This notion gave crusading Victorian Americans the incentive to intervene in the lives of the deprived other, uplifting them toward the civilized world of industrialization.

Shapiro's work inspired other scholars to take a closer look at the cultural explanations for violence in Appalachia. Studies found the region to be more culturally diverse than described earlier with inhabitants who had ancestors from not just Scotch-Irish descent, but also from Welsh, English, German, Italian, Native American, and African lineages, thus debunking the theory of a homogeneous Scotch-Irish "border culture" that espoused violence.

The thirteen essays in this collection serve to cast each instance of Appalachian violence under the prism of history, examining each for complex causes including racial tension, economic inequality, governmental instability, class struggles, politically-motivated infighting, and land disputes. In other words, the kinds of forces that have caused violence throughout our nation at large were also at work in the mountains.

There is an interesting discussion of feuding in T.R.C. Hutton's essay, "Assassins and Feudists: Politics and Death in the Bluegrass and Mountains of Kentucky" where politicians found it expedient to blame political violence on the reputation of "bloody Breathitt" in order to hide corruption. A very compelling account of the state of Franklin which was formed briefly in the 1780s from western North Carolina also makes for interesting analysis. On the surface, the secession of Franklin from North Carolina seemed to be over a federal law requiring states with substantial western lands to cede them to the federal government. But in a closer examination of the historic forces, Kevin T. Barksdale reveals clashes for land with the Overhill Cherokee and a "divide and conquer" policy by one of North Carolina's governors to be instrumental in the bloodshed that eventually ensued. Bruce Stewart's own contribution, to the collection involves the negative image of moonshiners painted by writers of the local color genre in the 1870s.

In fact, many of the contributors to Blood in the Hills credit national press and literary genres with perpetuating the stereotypes of mountain violence. By providing a more complete picture of one region where violence has been exaggerated and misunderstood, Stewart gives the reader a better understanding of violence throughout the entire United States.

This review originally aired on Around Cincinnati on March 11, 2012, WVXU 91.7. You may listen to the archived review at the audio link to the right of this blog.

My Bold Kentucky Home

Since 1999, Raison D'Etre(my folk trio) has been included in the Kentucky Arts Council's Performing Arts Directory. Because of that honor, we have appeared on In Performance at the Governor's Mansion, showcased at the Performing Arts Exchange, and been afforded the chance to be among those performing and selling product at one of the nation's top arts and crafts show, Kentucky Crafted: the Market.

If you've never been to the Market, it includes visually stunning arts and crafts and is jam-packed with literary, musical, culinary, architectural, dramatic and dance events. There's so much to do and see(not to mention buy) that three of my college friends are coming from all points in the Commonwealth to spend the weekend in Lexington…kind of a midpoint meet-up destination for them.

Raison D'Etre is happy to be scheduled for the Kentucky Stage on one of the public days of the event, March 4 at 12 noon. We'll also get to play for the trade traffic on March 1 at 5 pm. And I am very excited to share one of my loves--in fact, the very reason I started this blog--at one of the Market's many workshops. I hope that some of you will join me at the Market for a HealthRhythms Empowerment Drumming Circle. I'll tote the drums to Lexington, so you don't have to bring a thing, but your willingness to express yourself in a new way. I just did a demo for Macy's Art Sampler at Fairfield Community Arts Center, and that group had an excellent time. No prior skill is necessary. If you'd like to know more about HealthRhythms, check out the video at this site where the founders(who trained me), facilitators, and participants tell you their experiences:

http://www.remo.com/portal/hr/

You can view the various workshops available at the Market and sign up at this link:

http://artscouncil.ky.gov/KentuckyArt/2012Market.htm

We are so grateful that the Kentucky Arts Council has ramped up the marketing of the total Market experience. They have always been adept at spreading the word about the event itself which has often been rated #1 in annual craft show polls. But this year, they are giving extra attention to the stages and workshops, providing a smart phone app, Facebook page, and many other first-time promotions. So, not to sound like everybody else, but yeah, why not…we'd really be happy if you'd "like" the Kentucky Stage on Facebook as we are trying to reach 100 likes TODAY.

You'd be supporting some really fine musical acts. And making our day.

http://www.facebook.com/thekentuckystage

Golden Girls of the West

My trio, Raison D'Etre, has a new project. Here's the one-sheet description:

The women of the folk trio, Raison D'Etre(Violet Rae Webster, Vickie Riffe Ellis and Roberta Schultz)have never backed down from a challenge, period. Especially period music challenges. When Historic Washington, KY wanted frontier carolers, they learned holiday tunes from pre-1820. When the Cincinnati Museum Center wanted Shaker music, Civil War songs, and WWII swing tunes, they researched, arranged, and found the costumes. So when the founder of the Old West Festival wondered if they just might be able to do an hour of Old West songs, Roberta Schultz, singer, guitar player, and one of the songwriters for the trio began researching:

"In one of the first articles that I read on the popular music of the late 1800s, I was surprised that the author declared this period a dead zone in music. Lots of minstrel shows were being performed all over the East and the South. And many of these shows had newly composed songs like "Lubly Fan" which later became "Buffalo Gals" and "Wait for the Wagon" which came from a musical in the 1850s. Cowboys took these songs with them when they rode the trails of the West, along with many tunes from the Civil War and old ballads that funneled through the folk process to become cowboy songs. I didn't see a 'dead zone.' Instead, I saw a rich period in American music that paved the way for singer songwriters, Tin Pan Alley, and Broadway musicals."

Schultz's research resulted in yet another full hour of period music that Raison D'Etre performs at the Old West Festival and for libraries as Golden Girls of the West.:

"We've always enjoyed having fun with our album titles. When we recorded a sound track for a community theatre production of 'Dearly Departed,' we couldn't resist putting our baby pictures on the cover and calling the collection of Baptist hymns 'Broadman Babies' to hearken back to the show tune 'Broadway Babies' and our early church-going roots. When we did a collection of classic Christmas carols, we called it 'Christmas Belles' and asked our friend Freddie Thoman to sketch a cover of three belles in hoop shirts that were also a string of bells. Much to our delight and surprise, the sequel to the play 'Dearly Departed' was also named 'Christmas Belles'--a coincidence that only encouraged the tongue-in-cheek naming tradition. So, when we learned an entire set of Old West tunes, I remembered the sister act, Girls of the Golden West, who recorded cowgirl songs during the 1940s. It didn't take long to think of the transposition for that title. 'Golden Girls of the West' was born."

While performing the Old West tunes during the 2008 inaugural season of the Old West Festival near Williamsburg, OH, the trio found that the set was often too sad for their liking. Said Schultz, "Cowboys had a pretty hard scrabble existence, so many of the songs were about homesickness, lost loves, and death. We were wondering what we could do to the set to lift our spirits without compromising its authenticity. So, we did what we always do to add some sass to a folk music set.

We added a few songs from the swing era that were about the Old West. Cole Porter's classic, 'Don't Fence Me In" causes lots of sing alongs, plus we can really bemoan our cowgirl plight with the cheeky 'Buttons and Bows.' Add Dale Evans' wonderfully upbeat 'Happy Trails' to the end of any set, and you have the recipe for a good time."

"Golden Girls of the West" loped their way into the studio this spring to begin recording this classic set of cowgirl tunes. The result is an honest, respectful rendering of 11 Old West songs anchored by the lighthearted trio of "Hollywood cowgirl songs," as Schultz likes to call them. One Schultz original entitled "The Papers" also found its way on to the recording since it is a family story about Henry Price, a young Blackfoot who traveled with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show to the Ohio Valley in the late 1800s. He was Violet Webster's and Roberta Schultz's great grandfather:

"My Grandma, Babe, always told me the story of how her daddy ended up in Portsmouth, OH as an indentured servant. It was an important legacy to her, and since it's part of our Old West history in this area, I thought it deserved a place on the album."

###

We debuted the new recording at the Old West Festival this fall to record crowds for the Festival and a few sales for us. If you'd like to hear a few authentic songs of the Old West plus some great Hollywood cowgirl tunes, I've included a link to the right and also a link to the interview Lee Hay did with me about the CD and the Festival back in September. You can buy the CD by going to the Raison D'Etre homepage(bottom link on the right.)

Happy Trails!

Wench

When Wench was first published in 2010 by Amistad Books, the work garnered praise from USA Today, People, and Essence. Available earlier this year in paperback, the provocative title leads the reader into the Ohio woods to a place that actually existed,Tawawa House. Author Dolen Perkins-Valdez found the kernel for her first novel while reading a biography of W.E.B. Du Bois about his tenure at Wilberforce University of Ohio. That biography made reference to a summer resort near Xenia that was popular among slave holders who vacationed with their enslaved mistresses.

From a sketched broadside of the actual resort, called Tawawa, a Shawnee word for clear water, newspaper advertisements from the time, and her own extensive reading of nineteenth century slave narratives, Perkins-Valdez was able to piece together what these summer forays into the free state of Ohio must have been like for a group of slaves during the years leading up to the Civil War.

The structure of the novel consists of four parts which are mainly chronological except for one flashback departure(Part II) that serves to explain how Lizzie, the main character, becomes a mistress to her owner, Nathaniel Drayle. Part I takes place during 1852, the second summer this particular group of slaves, from Louisiana, Tennessee, and Georgia travels to Tawawa with their masters. The proximity of their cabins, the more casual vacation attitude of the resort and their cooperation to serve the small group of slave owners brings them together in a way not permitted at their southern plantations. The resort also includes a hotel where freemen and women are employed. The slaves are fascinated that the hotel employees can come and go as they please. And even more intrigued when they learn that a resort exists nearby for free blacks.

This unfamiliar notion of freedom becomes more pronounced when the "regulars" at the resort, Lizzie, Reenie and Sweet meet a new arrival to Tawawa, named Mawu. Independent and strong-willed, Mawu voices the group's unexpressed hope for escape. Then, as the women actually meet the inhabitants of the resort for free blacks and a Quaker abolitionist named Glory, their thoughts of freedom pervade the atmosphere for the rest of Part I.

I found the flashback in Part II, which goes back to the period from 1842-1849 and focuses on the character, Lizzie, to be jarring at first. Part I set up the major conflict for this interesting group of characters so well that I wanted to know which ones would seek the freedom right under their noses. However, since Part II takes a close-up look of how a young slave girl becomes a mistress to her owner and what this does to the fabric of his family and her resulting children, I am grateful that Perkins-Valdez structured the narrative as she did.

In Parts III and IV, the friendships among Lizzie, Mawu, Reenie, and Sweet deepen as they support each other through tragic events and discover the love of family denied them by the institution of slavery. The decision to grab freedom while they are so near it becomes complicated by many unforeseen circumstances. The novel explores the themes of power and freedom, love and dependence, all while turning an unflinching eye toward the moral complexities embodied in slavery.

When asked why she chose the title, Wench, Perkins-Valdez cites that wanted posters often listed runaway female slaves as "wenches," reinforcing a stereotype prevalent during those times that regarded black women as hypersexualized. While the word "wench" originally meant "young girl" in Middle English, it evolved to mean "wanton woman." When the word entered American English, it was applied specifically to black women. The author notes (in the interview following the text of the novel) that given the sexual servitude of her characters, the title really seemed to fit.

Wench will appeal to readers who love historic fiction, but also to those who just love a good read, strong characters, and tough questions. You can find a link to Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez at WVXU.org.

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.