The Saints of Swallow Hill (2022) by Donna Everheart

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Saints of Swallow Hill (2022)

by Donna Everheart

Valdosta, Georgia

Georgia: 24/24

  I started the Georgia chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America back on April 15th of this year, meaning these twenty-four titles took over seven months to knock back.  The Saints of Swallow Hill is last because it's an Audiobook, and my time spent listening to Audiobooks is way, way down this year.  Also, I thought The Saints of Swallow Hill was mostly tedious, a depression-era work of historical fiction set on a Turpentine Farm in South Georgia.   One main character is a rootless jack-of-all-trades with a penchant for banging the wife of his immediate supervisor everywhere he goes.  The other is a childless widow who is forced to flee the Carolinas after a neighbor sees the immediate aftermath of her shotgun abetted mercy killing of her sick husband.   The plot is a conventional will they or won't they romance enlivened by the Southern Georgia swamp-forest setting- not an environment with which I am familiar.

  Looking through the 24 titles representing Georgia, a handful stand out- Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers, Tayari Jones and Honore Jeffers- all women.  The classics portion includes Cane and Gone With the Wind, which are both canon level American Lit.   Most of the "discoveries" were in the African American authored books- Appalache Red by Raymond Andrews was particularly memorable.   Bringing up the bottom, as always, the chick lit and YA titles.  Georgia is a solid mid-tier literary state- third in this chapter behind Florida and Louisiana, but if it had been in the prior grouping it probably would be a close second to Virginia, and maybe the number one state from that chapter.