A Hit (and A Miss)

When we first started this shelter in place situation, oh those many (many) weeks ago, I secretly thought to myself — oh well, at least I’ll get lots of reading time. And with our little house stuffed with unread books I’ve hoarded collected over the years — what an opportunity, I thought.

But, alas, it just hasn’t happened. I’ve been the worst reader lately — picking up and setting aside books — distracted and un-tethered.

There have been some accomplishments — I planted two successive vegetable gardens. First of the lettuce is just now ready. I’ve been doing some knitting while seduced into TV binge-watching with Husband. Also working with our neighborhood association on blocking permanent night time stadium lighting at the private high school across the street…don’t ask — arghh.

But I’ve also wasted time — endlessly checking email and Facebook for friends’ updates and watching stupid (but often cute) videos.

I lacked focus. So this weekend I had a stern talk with myself and bravely finished one book and three-quarters of another. Thus, ‘a hit and a miss’.

Today, the hit:

Fair and Tender Ladies

by Lee Smith

When traveling, I always try and visit an independent bookshop and support them by buying one (just one) book about the region and by a local author. When visiting Asheville, North Carolina last year, I wandered into their famous independent bookshop Malaprop’s, and found this beauty.

We meet Ivy Rowe, the narrator and letter writer of this epistolary novel, when she is a young girl with no education. The letters begin around the turn of the century when Ivy is a child living with eight siblings on the family farm in the mountains of Appalachia. Written with quaint misspellings and in the vernacular of Southern speech, the letters reflect the harsh poverty of farm life, as well as the simple beauties of the Appalachia. “This is the taste of spring,” her father tells Ivy, and she never forgets it, even when the family must move down the mountain into the booming town of Majestic, after her father’s death.

The local school teacher recognizes Ivy’s intelligence and encourages her to continue her education up North. But, betrayed by her passionate nature Ivy becomes pregnant. Thus ‘ruint,’ she marries a childhood friend who takes her back to the family homestead, where she bears several children and endures the endless toil of a farmer’s wife. Just when life seems drearily predictable, she succumbs in middle age to an irresistible affair which brings severe consequences.

Ms. Smith takes us through seven decades of Ivy’s life, and at 367 pages, I got bogged down and laid it aside for many months — (just look at that cover how could I ever have put it aside?). When I got back into Ivy’s life story this weekend, I devoured the latter third of the book which conveys the momentous changes in Appalachia, during which time, as Ivy laments:

Everybody has took everything out of here first the trees, then the coal, then the children.

But in the next letter, Ivy marvels in the beauty of seeing lights down in the valley for the first time:

…and, lo and behold, all up and down the bottom, lights came on! And you can see them shining on the lower slopes of Bethel Mountain too, they twinkle like stars.

Ivy is a wonderfully appealing character with endearing faults: an old soul — proud, yet bright, impetuous, and sensual. She is a fully rounded heroine as are some of the other vivid characters who inhabit Virginia’s Appalachia region. First published in 1988, Fair and Tender Ladies reads in the tradition of oral storytelling. It’s a poetically written, yet not overly sentimental tale of one woman’s life — its joys and sorrows — struggles and delights. I’m so glad I finished Fair and Tender Ladies — and happily, it seems to have broken my reading slump.

One book down, only a houseful to go.

Not an accurate representation of my books.
My shelves are neater – I refuse to stack books on the floor.
But I am known to shelve two deep and behind each other.