Light to the Hills

 I've been a fan of Applachian literature for decades. When I saw that one of the Amazon Kindle First Reads for November was an Appalachian novel, I knew I wanted to read it.  The book's blurb on Amazon—"A richly rewarding novel about family bonds, the power of words, and the resilience of mothers and daughters in 1930s Appalachia"—caught my attention and reeled me in. So—that's how I happened to order Bonnie Blaylock's novel, Light to the Hills. I'm glad I did. I really enjoyed the book.

Light to the Hills is Appalachian fiction, as well as women's fiction, historial fiction, and a coming-of-age tale. It's beautifully written and well-crafted; Bonnie Blaylock has an MA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee. This novel won the 2021 Porch Prize in fiction, and you can read an excerpt in the Nashville Review.

Part of a review in the Historical Novel Society says, "This is a gorgeously written and well-layered novel that immediately transports us to the Appalachian Mountains of the 1930s. Bonnie Blaylock does a wonderful job of portraying the beauty of the “shifting blues and greens” of Appalachia and the proud determination of its people."  

Amanda Rye, 22-year-old widowed mother of a young son, supports herself and her child by working as packhorse librarian for the WPA. One rainy afternoon, as Amanda rides through the woods on her mule Junebug, she encounters young Sass—who's been hunting for ginseng—as a rattlesnake is coiled to strike Sass. Amanda pulls her pistol from her boot and kills the snake. Always eager to introduce another family to the books she carries, Amanda follows Sass home.

I loved the description of Sass MacInteer's home as Amanda first sees it : "Shaded by the hardwoods surrounding it, Sass’s house appeared in the distance, the tentative reach of its crooked split-rail fence marking the yard’s perimeter. Woodsmoke wisped from the stacked-stone chimney and hung in a blue fog just under the damp trees, smelling of welcome and warmth. The house was made of mostly hand-hewn logs and a simple plank porch that ringed the square dwelling like starched crinoline." 

Before long, Amanda is helping fix supper and sharing her books with the family. She leaves The Velveteen Rabbit, which she thinks the children will enjoy. When Amanda returns two weeks later, she  learns that none of them can read, although they've been puzzling out the story by looking at the pictures. She reads the story to them, and in her subsquent visits she brings books to help them learn to read. Before long, Amanda and the MacInteers look forward to her visits.

Of course, some complications ensue—a cave-in at the mine where Mr. MacInteer and his son Finn work, an unsavory character in the area, etc. Past and present secrets are revealed, but I'll not give them away. Suffice to say that justice is served in a way you'd never expect.

If you want a wonderful Appalachian reading experience, I highly recommend Light to the Hills.

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Temple Secrets

I love southern literature with strong women characters, a bit of the paranormal, and a happy—or at least mostly happy— ending. Throw in wisdom, a little humor, eccentric characters, redemption, and a strong sense of place, and I’m hooked. 

Temple Secrets, by Susan Gabriel hooked me and reeled me in. I hated to see the book end. Temple Secrets has a lot of what I like to find in a book.

I like a book with a strong opening paragraph, and this one has it: “Iris Temple has been threatening to die for three decades, and most of the people in Savannah who know her want her to get on with it. Queenie looks up from the crime novel she’s hidden within the pages of Southern Living magazine and takes in the figure of her half-sister, Iris Templeton, across the sunroom. Everything about Iris speaks of privilege: the posture, the clothes, the understated jewels. Not to mention a level of entitlement that makes Queenie’s head ache. An exasperated moan slips from her mouth before she can catch it.” 

That paragraph tells us about the two main characters and the relationship between them. It tells us where they are. The details made me want to read more. Why did so many want Iris to die?

I like a book with a strong sense of place, and Temple Secrets surely has it. My husband and I visited Savannah when we lived in Charleston during 1968-70 and took day trips when I wasn’t teaching/getting my MAT from The Citadel and he wasn’t working on Polaris subs at the shipyard. I can see Gabriel’s setting exactly. I can feel it, too, because there’s nothing like the heat and humidity in those cities.

I particularly like elderly women characters who have a “gift.” (Remember Aint Lulie in my self-published novel, Them That Go?) Old Sally, age one hundred when the book begins, communes with ghosts, is precognitive, and knows Gullah. The granddaughter of a Temple slave, she knows a few secrets, too. Old Sally’s daughter, Queenie is also a strong woman, who’s kept one secret for sixty-some years. For generations, Old Sally’s ancestors were the white Temples’ slaves. After emancipation, a few of the slaves’ descendants were employed as domestics by the Temples, and the Temple men took advantage of the situation.

But the ill-tempered Iris Temple, who has a delicate constitution and suffers from horrendous flatulence is up in her eighties and won’t last forever. She’s promised the family mansion to Queenie, but her son Edward Temple III, who rarely visits, wants it all. Iris’s daughter Rose, who’s missing a pinkie fingertip because Edward cut it off with a family sword when she was five, is estranged from her mother and has been living out west for the last twenty years and likely won’t inherit much, if anything. Rose writes to Queenie, but she and her mother don’t communicate. Meanwhile, Old Sally’s granddaughter Violet helps support her school-teacher husband and her two teenage daughters by keeping house and cooking for Iris.

But who’ll get the book of Temple secrets that’s kept in a safe deposit box. Iris uses the information supposedly contained therein to threaten Savannah’s society and bend them to her will. And therein lies the complication—someone is leaking these secrets to the newspaper. Soon threats are posted to the Temples on the wrought iron fence, a brick is heaved through a window, anonymous phone calls disrupt the household, etc. But I won’t give away any more of the plot. Suffice to say that it has some interesting twists and a few secrets revealed.

I like books in which characters share their philosophies or their wisdom—especially when their thoughts impart a universal truth. Since I’m elderly, I could identify with this passage about Old Sally:  “That’s what it’s like to get this old, she thinks. You look up one day and your whole life has rushed past so fast you barely caught a glimpse of what’s what’s passing. Then before you know it, you’re at the end of your life and wondering how you got there.”

I liked this book so much that before I knew it, I was at the end. And I wondered how I’d gotten there so fast.

I highly recommend Temple Secrets!

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