All the Living(2009) by CE Morgan

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

All the Living (2009)
by CE Morgan

Berea, Kentucky

Kentucky: 3/16

   Like Strangers Here Below, All the Living is set in Berea, Kentucky.  Birds of Opulence, the first book in the Kentucky chapter, is also set nearby. I gather from all three books that this whole swath of Kentucky was settled from the north, and settled late, and settled without a landed class of plantation owners, which allowed for alternative ways of life: Interracial schools, communities of free African American.  Here, we have a young man who inherits his family tobacco farm and then moves in to his family home with a local girl he meets at an orphanage.  They live together "in sin" which is surely unusual but the farm they live on is so isolated that literally no one knows.  She finds work as a pianist at the local church- piano being her only skill (something she reflects upon frequently.)  All the Living is another example of the "Go Nowhere, Do Nothing" novel which becomes about the place where it is located because that is the only setting.  Great for the purpose of the project, but these protagonists, white, black, young, old- blend together over time in terms of the limits of their insights about the human condition.