The Ice at the Bottom of the World (1990) by Mark Richard

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Ice at the Bottom of the World (1990)

by Mark Richard

Franklin, Virginia

Virginia: 14/17

   This collection of short-stories won the Faulkner/Pen AWARD in 1990.  He published one other collection of short-stories, one novel and one work of non-fiction.  As the Penguin product page makes clear, you can file Richard under "southern gothic," comparing him to Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor.  I didn't have to read the product page to get that vibe- it comes through on every page.  When I read an author with a career trajectory like Mark Richard:  early short story collection wins a prize, a debut novel that doesn't sell and then...nothing...I'm always interested in the question of "what happened?"  Here, the combination of reading his short story collection and a description of his first and only novel, Fishboy, gives me a good idea of what happened.  His first novel didn't sell, and there was nothing about the way it didn't sell to inspire a big publisher to give him another shot, and Richard, for whatever reasons either couldn't or wouldn't take a step backwards.  His Wikipedia page fills in the rest- he moved to Los Angeles and started writing and producing both network and prestige series television.  There you have it. 

The Tubman Command (2019) by Elizabeth Cobb

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Tubman Command (2019)

by Elizabeth Hobbs

Combahee River, South Carolina

South Carolina: 8/14

   The Tubman Command is a work of historical fiction imagining an episode from the career of Harriet Tubman.  Tubman is best known for her success as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, where she personally led hundreds of enslaved people to freedom.  This book is about her work for the Union Army during the Civil War as a scout, where she was sent ahead of Union forces to reconnoiter and gather information, at great personal risk to her person.  Specifically, it's about a raid up the Combahee River in South Carolina to free blacks from several of the great plantations in that part of the state.   It's a fairly interesting story but the fact that this is a white author writing from the perspective of a famous African American person made me a tad uncomfortable.  Certainly, if you know that fact you know that there is not going to be a single negative observation written about any of the African American characters.  The Tubman Command is more like a hagiographic work than a novel.

Black Thunder (1936) by Arna Bontemps

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Black Thunder (1936)

by Arna Bontemps

Richmond, Virginia

Virginia: 13/17

  Black Thunder scores high marks in several categories. First, it was written before 1980.  Second, the author is an interesting dude (African American, lived in Los Angeles).  Third, it has an interesting subject, a historical slave revolt in Virginia in the very early 19th century (1800).  Understanding what actually happened in the South before the Civil War requires reading about slave revolts because of the fierce impact they had on the wild imaginations of white elites in the South, and the way that fear was then translated into a very heavy handed legal regime.  It might sound absurd to talk about more or less cruel forms of slavery, but the American South was, in fact, quite cruel relative to other slave systems, with slavery being hereditary and with strict limits being placed on uplifting slaves (It was illegal to teach slaves to read in South Carolina) as well as limits being placed on the ability of non-slave blacks to remain in slave states (Freed slaves had to leave Virginia within 48 hours of freedom.)

   I wish there were more picks like this in the 1,001 Novels project.  If I was involved in any revision I would add more older titles and remove more of the recent titles. 

Hello Down There (1993) by Michael Parker

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Hello Down There (1993)

by Michael Parker

Elizabeth City, North Carolina

North Carolina 15/20

   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. 

A Crooked Tree (2021) by Una Mannion

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

 A Crooked Tree (2021)

by Una Mannion

Valley Forge Mountain, Pennsylvania 

Pennsylvania: 1/27

   New Year, New States!  I've run out of easily available Audiobooks from the last chapter (Maryland through South Carolina) so I'm moving forward on two fronts- back north to Pennsylvania and continuing south through Georgia and Florida while I try to polish off the Ebook/physical book portion of the prior chapter.   The first book from Pennsylvania is A Crooked Tree by Una Mannion.  This novel is from the most common category of the 1,001 Novels project:  A bildungsroman written from the POV of a adolescent girl in difficult socio-economic circumstances, sub-category white, sub-category debut novel.  Like almost all of the books in this category we've got a narrator who is trapped in her family home, in the middle of nowhere (played here by someplace called "Valley Forge Mountain.")

  Here, our narrator is Libby, an awkward 15 year old girl living with her single mom and three siblings (one older sister, one older brother, two younger sisters.)  Driving home from school at the beginning of the book, her younger sister angers her Mom to the point where mom abandons younger sister on the side of the road, forcing her to walk home.  Sister is picked up and mildly assaulted by the sinister "barbie man" an albino type dude with long blonde hair.  Sister jumps out of barbie man's moving vehicle to escape and reaches Libby's weekly babysitting gig, promising her to secrecy so that their mom doesn't get in trouble.  Events move forward from that point in somewhat predictable fashion- I was surprised at the number of reviewers who expressed enthusiasm at the plotting in A Crooked Tree but it might be a function of my day-to-day experience in the criminal justice system.

     The world of "the mountain" is well-depicted, but I wasn't particularly enthralled by Libby or her troubled family.