1,001 Novels: A Library of America, North Carolina

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

North Carolina

Published 10/4/24

Nothing Gold Can Stay (2013)

by Ron Rash

Boiling Springs, North Carolina

North Carolina: 1/19

   North Carolina, here we go.  I drove through North Carolina once after college driving between Washington DC and San Francisco, but I didn't stop and I've never been back.  These days what I know about North Carolina is that it's a reddish-purple state with some strong universities, a big African-American population and a bunch of southern white people.   I'm looking forward to actually learning something about North Carolina via the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project and Nothing Gold Can Stay, a book of short-stories by Ron Rash, is a good start.

    Boiling Springs is mapped on the border of North and South Carolina, about half way between Charlotte and Asheville.  It's a whole lot of nothing according to the characters, who see a two-hour drive to an Indian Casino as a big trip.  One reoccurring motif is characters filling out financial aid forms for college- there are fourteen stories in this collection and financial aid forms are mentioned in four or five of them.   There's also meth addiction, illegal bear hunting and run-down shacks a plenty.  Despite the repetition of the financial aid motif and the author's steady disregard for providing endings to the stories, I enjoyed Nothing Gold Can Stay and Rash is the first author in weeks where I've considered looking further into his bibliography. 

Published 10/11/24

Winter Birds (1994)

by Jim Grimsley

Grifton, North Carolina

North Carolina: 2/19

   Winter Birds is another incredibly dark family drama written from the perspective of the son an extremely dysfunctional family living off a Freeway in rural North Carolina.  Winter Birds is so dark that it was originally published in German translation after no American publisher would take it.  After the German language translation, Grimsley did find a publisher but it was never a hit- Publisher's Weekly straight up panned it, for many of the same reasons I didn't enjoy reading the book.

 Grimsley is primarily a play-wright, and Winter Birds reads like a play- the entire book takes place inside the family home and is told in the second person.   Basically, the entire book is an extended scene of domestic violence, with multiple- multiple lengthy scenes that are basically this guy's one-armed father chasing his poor mom around the house with a knife.  Dad commits all types of atrocities including stabbing the family dog to death while screaming "this is you" to his wife, who is hiding in the woods.  In the culminating scene/waking nightmare, Dad forces the narrator to have sex with his own mother.  Horrific! 

Published 10/16/24

 The House Behind the Cedars (1900)

by Charles W. Chesnutt 

Fayetteville, North Carolina

North Carolina: 3/19

   I was under the impression that the only Fayetteville was the one in Arkansas, but here we are in Fayetteville North Carolina for this excellent minor classic, The House Behind the Cedars, written by bi-racial (that's not what they called it back then!) author, Charles. W. Chesnutt.  This is the kind of book I'd hope to see a lot more of in the 1,001 Novels project.  First, it's a book from the 19th century (I extend the 19th century through the beginning of World War I in 1914).  Second, it's a book with some wit to it, that also exists in a recognizable literary universe- allusions to Walter Scott and a 19th century version of a Renaissance Faire both appear in its pages.  Third, it's a point of view: That of the "passing" of people with African American ancestry for white, that is little encountered in contemporary literary culture. 

   Generally speaking, any actually readable American novel written before The Great Gatsby is a find, and I enjoyed reading The House Behind the Cedars, even if the frequent discussion of "the race question" is galling to contemporary ears.  Also, the frequent use of the n word, and not in a nice way, by bigoted Southern characters. You aren't going to get assigned The House Behind the Cedars in your introduction to American Lit class, let's put it that way.  I would love to find more books written before World War I on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list. Rediscovering 19th Century American Literature is a potential gold-mine, or silver-mine, anyway. 

Published 10/17/24

In West Mills (2019)

 by De'Shawn Charles Winslow
711 Main Street, South Mills, North Carolina

North Carolina: 4/19

  In West Mills was the debut novel by author De'Shawn Charles Winslow, about a fictional African-American community in the northeastern tip of North Carolina.  I really enjoyed this book, centered around Azalea "Knot" Centre, an unconventional woman who is a dedicated reader and equally dedicated alcoholic.   Set between the 1940's and the 1980's, In West Mills nearly takes place out of time- the characters are blessedly unaware of the societal upheaval that never reaches their little piece of heaven. 

  Most of the book concerns Knot and her decision to have two children and surrender them to her childless neighbors.  She is present as they grow up, and the plot expands to encompass her children and their lives as Winslow moves through the decades.  Knot also has her friends- Otis Lee, and Valley, the local representative of the LGBT community in West Mills.  She also has her enemies- one of her neighbors betrays her secret pregnancy and subsequent surrender of her children to her parents, and they refuse to talk to her for the rest of the book. In West Mills is unusual for the books from the south in that it is, basically, a book only about African Americans with little or no white presence.  Most of the books from the south contain both black and white characters, and the plots are often about their interrelationships.  Contrast this to the north, and New York City in particular, where single ethnicity books are the rule, rather than the exception. 

  Also this was a very good Audiobook.

Published 10/18/24

Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail (1983)

by Louise Shivers

Tarborough, North Carolina

North Carolina: 5/19

   Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail is another win for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America: A regional work of fiction by a little-known author who I would have never read but for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  There's not much online about her- a stub-like Wikipedia page that mentions this book was named best first novel of the year by USA Today in 1983(!) and was made into  a movie in 1987, Summer Heat.   Her New York Times obituary noted the surprise success of this book- which was published when she was 53.

  Reviewers at the time compared her writing style to Flannery O'Connor, and author Mary Gordon had a role to play as well- selecting the manuscript out of a prize competition where she was the judge and sending it to her publisher.   The plot can be described in one line: Rural wife of a farmer has an affair with a hired hand with violent and predictable results, but like many books set in the rural south, it is all about the atmosphere.  The hot days, the sultry nights and the desperate need to escape- if not to another place then to another person, both themes that are active in this book. 

Published 10/24/24

Roxanna Slade (1998)

by Reynolds Price

Macon, North Carolina

North Carolina: 6/19

    I'd never heard of Reynolds Price, a North Carolina-based author of some reputation. He was active for decades both as a writer and a professor- Roxanna Slade is one of his last books, and I imagine him writing a book from the perspective of a woman was a late career stretch for him.  Roxanna is a poor, uneducated white woman who narrates the book looking back at her ninety year long life, from her beginnings as a 18 year old bride, the birth of her two children, her struggles with depression during a time when there weren't many treatment options, a suicide attempt and then life as a single, older mother after her husband passes away in his 50's. 

  This is the rare book from this part of the country where race is a relatively minor issue.  Roxanna Slade's people aren't wealthy enough to have servants nor poor enough to be in economic competition with their African American neighbors.  Late in the book, Slade recalls her husband punching his long-time African American employee in the eye (and causing him to lose said eye) after the employee had been drinking and demanded back pay from her husband.  

   I recognized women from my Grandmother's generation in this book- women who were pushed into a domestic role in the home without a second thought or option and ended up living long enough to see what they missed. 

Pulished 10/28/24

Bewilderness (2021)

by Karen Tucker

523 N. Main St. Troy, North Carolina

North Carolina: 7/19

   Due to my job as a criminal defense lawyer working in Federal Court, I have ample time to contemplate the vagaries of life as a drug addict, since that epithet describes many of my clients.  Thus, this novel, about two young, female opiate addicts living in the middle-of-nowhere North Carolina was always going to be a challenge for me.  I started by checking out the Audiobook but had to give up about a third of the way in because I simply couldn't stand the narrator/protagonist.   I am totally ok with drug addicts and their issues, but you have to be a pretty interesting drug addict to keep my attention, and this one was not.  It's interesting in that this is one of the first depictions of rural opiate addiction, which is a huge issue- even at the highest levels of national politics, but that doesn't make this a fun book. 

Published 11/5/24

Jim the Boy (2000)

by Tony Earley

Rutherfordton, North Carolina

North Carolina: 8/19

   Jim the Boy  was an easy mark- under 200 pages, written from the perspective of a prepubescent boy growing up in the 1930's.  Earley was named one of Granta's Top 30 Writers Under 30 at one point but the only novels he ever published was this book and a sequel published in 2008.  As with all of the authors I hadn't heard of before the 1001 Novels project, I checked out his New York Times coverage and found a really detailed review for this book and a somewhat less detailed review for the sequel and then a review for his most recent collection of short stories, published in 2014.  I guess it's not exactly a disappearing act but you'd hardly call him a household name.

  The most distinct aspect of Jim the Boy is the author's rejection of complexity that is inherent in choosing a 9/10 year old boy as the narrator and protagonist.  Like many of the protagonists and a few of the narrators, Jim isn't a complicated fellow.  This isn't a trauma narrative, but the opposite, a non-trauma narrative where the emotional peak is a back-alley confrontation in a small North Carolina town where Jim and a buddy are threatened by local streets toughs, and rescued by a friendly African-American.   In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of another book within the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project that is so gosh darned wholesome. 

  The New York Times critic made a big deal out of the style back in 2000, which makes this book sound like a purposeful rebuttal to the frenzied Y2k era, but a quarter century later we have gotten no less frenzied.

Published 11/21/24

Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1989)

by Alan Gurganus

Fells, North Carolina

North Carolina: 9/19

    This book is 700 pages long.  It isn't JUST 700 pages long- it is also a big ole physical 700 page book with smallish type and small margins.  Of course, I'd heard about this book before- Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All  was a monster hit when it was first published- especially for a 700 page work of more or less serious literary fiction.  It spawned a 1994 television mini-series which was also a hit, winning four Emmy's, and a musical version in 2003 (starring Ellen Burstyn) which flopped on Broadway and closed after one show(!).  Its length precludes a ready transition to the internet era, but I'd wager most active readers over the age of forty have at least heard of it.  

   For those unfamiliar, Oldest Living Confederate Widor Tells All is both the title of the book and an accurate description of the plot- a ninety nine year old Lucy Marsden, married to a 50-something confederate veteran at the age of fifteen, lives in a rest home and she is being interviewed by someone- there are frequent in-book references to the tape recording process of the interview.   Over the course of these 700 pages you not only get to hear Lucy's story- child bride, mother-of-eight and put-upon wife- but also the stories of her husband, her mother, her husbands mother, her husband's ex-slave and possibly the narrator's only friend and maybe more that I'm leaving out.  The multiplicity of narrative viewpoints and the use of a spoken idiom both conspire to lengthen Confederate Widow.  

  Lucy is a plucky, humorous narrator, and one aspect I couldn't get over is that her aw shucks, almost exaggerated southern dialect (which, mind you, constitutes almost the only distinct narrative voice for 700 pages) is something that young Lucy adopts to annoy her Mother, who raises her to be better.  Lucy has other plans, those other plans being married off to a fifty year old man before she turns 16.  

   The over-all vibe for me resembled that of John Irving- quirky, eccentric small-town types who experience both humor and great sadness- but in a humorous way.  In fact, if I had to make a one-line pitch for this book pre-publication it would be "John Irving but set in North Carolina"- Irving was at the height of his powers in 1989- that was the year A Prayer for Owen Meany came out. Also, in 1989, Alice Walker published The Temple of My Familiar and Billy Bathgate (E.L. Doctorow) came out so Guraganus was right there and you could argue that this book would be a better representative in the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list than is A Prayer for Owen Meany- one of several Irving novels on that list,

  There is no doubt it's one of the top books from North Carolina and a top 5 title for the sub-chapter (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina) and top 10 for the full chapter.  Still, it is hard to imagine many people taking the time to actually sit down and read this 700 page book in 2024.  The late 1980s were different in that regard- you could publish a 470 page novel like London Fields by Martin Amis and EVERYONE read it.

  Published 11/25/24

Even as We Breathe (2020)

by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

227 Drama Road, Cherokee, North Carolina

North Carolina: 10/19

   Even as We Breathe is a pretty low-stakes work of historical fiction set at a World War II detainee camp for enemy diplomats (a luxury hunting lodge/spa situation outside Asheville). The narrator is orphaned high school graduate Cowney Sequoyah (Pronounced "County"), an Eastern Cherokee descended from the Cherokee's who hid rather than take the "Trail of Tears" march to the Indian territory of Oklahoma.  I was thrilled to encounter a book written from this viewpoint, which, despite an active interest in Native American themes I'd hardly knew existed- like I know they have a Casino on Eastern Cherokee land but that's it.  Wikipedia says that between 800 to 1000 tribal members remained behind- vs, the 15k odd that got moved out, so it is a rare POV.   

    The location of this title on the map marks it as the Eastern most point of the entire chapter from Maryland to South Carolina.  Only a half dozen books in the entire chapter are set "in the mountains," which strikes me as being an undercount, but it's likely subsidized by the states like Kentucky and West Virginia where EVERY book is a mountain book. 

    Aside from the POV- which is very interesting- the rest of the work is rote historical fiction with some family drama thrown in.   It made for a great Audiobook since it is narrated by the protagonist and he has an American Indian voice/accent that I don't typically encounter.

   Published 12/3/24

Ellen Foster (1987)

by Kaye Gibbons

Rocky Mount, North Carolina

North Carolina: 11/19

   The caption that 1,001 Novels: A Library of America editor Susan Straight wrote for Ellen Foster says, "In a voice like no other, a young girl tells the story of the dissolution of her family..."  I have to take issue with that statement, since the voice of a young girl in difficult circumstances is the single most prevalent voice in the entire 1,001 Novels project.  Every state has at least one book that could be accurately described the same way, and many of the large states have multiple books that could be described this way.   It's only a mild spoiler to reveal that the name of the book comes from the fact that Ellen, the narrator and protagonist, proudly takes the name of the foster family who takes her in, because she thinks "Foster" is their name, and a generic description.   Ellen describes a childhood that is utterly familiar to me as a result of all the similar books in the 1,001 Novels project:   One dead parent, one absent parent, an immediate family that isn't inclined to help.   Just about the only thing that doesn't happen in this book that a reader might reasonably expect is that the protagonist isn't sexually abused by a relative or friend of the family.    To be fair, she does have a distinctive voice, and it's a good Audiobook because it's just her recounting her history to the reader for the entire book.

Published 1/8/25

Tending to Virginia (1987)

by Jill McCorkle

Lumberton, North Carolina

North Carolina: 12/19

  Tidewater Tales and Oldest Living Confederate War Widow Tells All really cramped my style in November/December 2024.  I spent almost a month and a half just reading those two physical books.  It created backlog on my physical reading list that I'm only clearing out now.  Tending to Virginia is one of those titles, a book that only exists as a hardback check out from the library.  I'd never heard of McCorkle before the 1,001 Novels project but it looks like she has a decent sized regional footprint with some national recognition- 74 returns in the New York Times search index and some minor prizes spread out over 20 years.   Her last book was in 2013, which makes me think she is semi-retired.  Tending to Virginia was her third book and it made the New York Times Notable Book list in 1987.  The original review pointed to her "skillful use of voice" and that was something I noticed. She also uses many types of modernist tricks to keep the reader off-balance, specifically, she doesn't sign-post her shifts in time as the three generations of women bedsit one of their number (Virginia) who is in the last stages of a difficult pregnancy.

   There are, as one might expect, deeply held family secrets which are exposed during Tending to Virginia.  Tending to Virginia is also an example of American literary fiction where the characters exists solely within the confines of a domestic setting and have no educational or professional experiences to speak of between the group of them.   The result of this situation is that "family" is the only subject of conversation that can sustain them in a literary fashion, so that is all they talk about. Ever.  In books like Tending to Virginia I yearn for scenes where the characters just go outside and describe the world around them, but that rarely happens in this book or any that shares its characteristics.  Family is everything to these women, and to abandon family is almost unthinkable.  Sounds boring to me.

Published 1/9/25

Now You Know It All (2021)

by Joanna Pearson

Shelby, North Carolina

North Carolina: 13/19

    Now You Know It All is a debut collection of short-stories by psychiatrist/author Joanna Pearson.  It was published by the University of Pittsburgh press- the first work I've read published by the University of Pittsburgh.   It also won the Drue Heinz literary prize, which I'd never heard of before but must be linked to the Heinz ketchup family.  The prize was decided by Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize winner and he was attracted to the straight-forward story telling embraced by Pearson- no metafictional fuckery here.  Clocking in at 224 pages with wide margins and large type, I read Now You Know It All in a single sitting and as is the case with many collections of short stories I found myself driving to grasp the links between the stories.   

   At least most of the subjects in these short stories have college educations. Beyond that it's the familiar constellation of female characters grappling with the fissures between jobs and spouses, kids and parents. There are a couple stories that edge into speculative fiction- my favorite was the story about a woman hitch-hiking in a perpetual-pandemic future who encounters a car of masked revelers on their way to an infection ball. 

Published 1/10/25

In Memory of Junior (1992)

by Clyde Edgergton

Summerlin, North Carolina

North Carolina: 14/19

    Another day, another Southern writer I'd never heard of before I started the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  He certainly isn't obscure, with a decades long track record of having his books reviewed by the New York Times and a prominent position teaching creative writing at a regional university in North Carolina.  The Times called this book "a shaggy cemetery story narrated by the 21 most interested parties."  I kind of groaned to myself when I saw that this small, 215 page book came with its own family tree in front a la a 900 page Russian novel, but it wasn't especially difficult to follow because none of these 20 characters do anything in this book except plot and scheme over the burial location of some family members.

   There is also a minor, unresolved struggle based on an inheritance that will flow based on the death order of an elderly couple.  In Memory of Junior was very much one of those books on the 1,001 Novels list where I just didn't care what happened in the book, didn't care about any of the characters and didn't find the milieu/setting interesting in anyway.   I did appreciate the literary technique expressed by cramming 20 narrators into 215 pages- which is a technique that George Saunders wrote all the way to a major literary award in recent years (Lincoln in the Bardo) but that book was about Lincoln and a bunch of ghosts, and this is about a bunch of redneck southerners who have nothing going on (except for the one family member who is a lawyer in Charlotte.)

Published 1/14/25

Hello Down There (1993)

by Michael Parker

Elizabeth City, North Carolina

North Carolina 15/19

   All the titles left in this chapter of the 1,001 Novels project are physical or ebooks- no more Audiobooks available.  That means these are the most obscure titles left, since every book with any kind of track record gets an Audiobook editions these days.  Hello Down There is a work of historical fiction about a university student who becomes addicted to morphine in the 1950's after sustaining a back-injury.  He's the oldest son of a wealthy local family (they own the building that contains the local pharmacy) and his addiction is the kind where he bullies the local pharmacist into supplying him drugs in excess of what he is legally allowed to possess.   It's a gentrified addiction, in other words.  

  He draws others into his orbit, notably the daughter of the pharmacist, and he spirits her away to the prison in Kentucky which happened to possess the first drug detox facility in the United States.  It's not unfamiliar literary territory- William Burroughs writes about the same place in Junky.   Hello Down There is another first novel and it's hard not to think there is some biographical elements involved even taking into account the historical setting.  I would imagine that Parker is from the same area.  Parker's drug-addled, well educated protagonist is a welcome respite from the legions of troubled adolescent girls that editor Susan Straight favors, but there wasn't a huge amount of action here and the central relationship between Parker's drug addled college-educated protagonist and his uneducated teen-age boo was not revelatory. 

Published 1/22/25

Let the Dead Bury the Dead (1992)

by Randall Kenan

Tim's Creek, North Carolina

North Carolina: 16/19

   Let the Dead Bury the Dead is a book of (inter-connected?) short stories set in the fictional town of Tim's Creek, founded by an escaped slave on the model of the "Maroon" communities of Jamaica.  The final story in the collection gives some historical context, and this isn't the first book of short-stories in the 1,001 Novels project to be set in a similar environment.  Despite having stories with fantastical elements- the first story features an infant who can tell the future-  Let the Dead Bury the Dead has a realist vibe even when the subject matter is more like speculative fiction.  

  Probably the most unusual aspect of Let the Dead Bury the Dead is the LGBT themed story- rare for the rural south and even rarer for rural African-American communities, though editor Susan Straight has gone out of her way to include those viewpoints in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  Kenan was known as a member of the LGBT community before his death in 2020. 

Published 2/19/25

Heathen Valley (1962)

by Romulus Linney

Valle Crucis, North Carolina

North Carolina: 17/19

    Heathen Valley is a strange (certainly by the standards of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America) pick, a novel based on a true story about the Protestant mission in the North Carolina Appalachians,  founded by an Episcopalian bishop who went on to be the highest ranked protestant to convert to Roman Catholicism.  Heathen Valley is based on a true story.  The Bishop in question is Levi Silliman Ives.  Literary fiction about religion is so rare that the novelty value is often enough to keep me interested, such was the case here, as the eponymous Heathen Valley itself, which is presented as a part of America without organized religion of any kind.  So much of the United States was founded directly by religious participants that an America without religion almost seems impossible.  

  However, as Heathen Valley depicts, parts of the Appalachians were founded without sanction from secular or religious authorities, leaving its residents without an organized religious presence.

Published 4/17/25

Evensong (1999) 

by Gail Godwin

High Balsam, North Carolina

North Carolina: 18/19

  Another book about Church people in the mountains of Western North Carolina, only this time it's the classy sort.  Evensong is a good example of what you might call domestic/low stakes fiction with just enough professional engagement (the narrator is a female pastor of an Episcopalian congregation in the North Carolina mountains) to make it interesting.  I was never really worried about anything going on in this book, but every twenty pages or so the narrator/protagonist would make some kind of wry observations about the vagaries of married/professional life that I would chuckle.  Her Wikipedia says she has three National Book Award finalist nominations (1975, 1980 and 1983) but never got a win.  Seems about right?  Church people are boring people, by in large, that is something I've learned from books in the 1,001 Novels: A Libary of America.

NOT READ

Cold Mountain (1997)

by Charles Frazier

North Carolina 19/19

   I read Cold Mountain when it came out- I think I just picked it up randomly on vacation or during a break from law school- something like that.