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The Mountain Novels #1
The Land Breakers
A motley band of characters makes its way into a high mountain valley in northwestern North Carolina to tame the land or to be consumed by it. Five years of struggle to create a community ensue, in which part of the struggle is just to survive. This is the story of late 18th century life in an untamed country.
356 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
390 people are currently reading
3888 people want to read
About the author
John Ehle
38 books70 followersJohn Ehle (1925-2018) grew up the eldest of five children in the mountains of North Carolina, which would become the setting for many of his novels and several works of nonfiction. Following service in World War II, Ehle received his BA and MA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he met the playwright Paul Green and began writing plays for the NBC radio series American Adventure. He taught at the university for ten years before joining the staff of the North Carolina governor Terry Sanford, where Ehle was a “one-man think tank,” the governor’s “idea man” from 1962 to 1964. (Sanford once said of Ehle: “If I were to write a guidebook for new governors, one of my main suggestions would be that he find a novelist and put him on his staff.”) Ehle was the author of eleven novels, seven of which constitute his celebrated Mountain Novels cycle, and six works of nonfiction. He had one daughter, actress Jennifer Ehle, with his wife Rosemary Harris, also an actress.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 251 reviews
June 20, 2021
“They could see the valley now, down there below them, and beyond it the high mountain they had been told about. They began to run, calling out gleefully. The sow broke loose from the saddle and fell, but followed squealing. ‘It’s right down there,’ Imy said, running, her broken shoes flapping against the old trail. She held out her hand and Mooney took it and they ran together, side by side, breathing heavily now. They could see below them where the river appeared out of the thickets and treetops. The cow was coming after, lowing. The dog ran ahead of them now. They ran to the valley floor and sank to the ground laughing near the upper springs, at the edge of a cold creek, buried their faces in the water, and he looked up at her then, laughing, water rolling down his cheeks and chin and from his hair onto his torn shirt, and he saw her pridefully, loving the sight of her and of this place here, their own, to which they had come…”
- John Ehle, The Land Breakers
Anyone who loves reading lives with the discomforting reality that we are not given enough time on earth to finish all the books we should, much less all that we want. Recently, as I was looking at my sagging bookshelves, it occurred to me quite clearly that there was no way I was ever going to get to all the titles I’ve purchased. And that doesn’t even take into account the books I’m inevitably going to buy in the future, or the ones that I will miss completely. There are simply too few hours, and too many choices.
With that said, I sometimes wonder about all the great books I don’t even know exist.
John Ehle’s The Land Breakers is one I almost missed. I had never even heard of it until I saw it listed in the eclectic back catalogue of the New York Review of Books. Originally published in 1964, the NYRB reissued Ehle’s Appalachian classic in a handsome paperback in 2014. It is actually the first of seven “mountain novels” written by Ehle, probably the most famous of which is The Journey of August King.
When I first picked this up, I was expecting an archetypal frontier story, featuring rugged individuals heading west, clashing with the Indians and “civilizing” the wilderness. This assumption turned out to be entirely wrong. Despite occurring at approximately the same time period in which Daniel Boone and others were warring in nearby Kentucky (the novel takes place from 1779-1784), The Land Breakers is not interested in any conflict pitting man against man. Indeed, by the time the lead character – former indentured servant Mooney Wright – arrives in the mountains, the Indians have already been pushed west, and are barely mentioned. The antagonist here is nature itself, especially the wild animals: an unstoppable bear; packs of ferocious wolves; and nests of poisonous snakes.
More than anything, The Land Breakers resembles a grown-up version of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Little House on the Prairie series. It is process-oriented, rather than plot driven. Mooney has very little when he arrives on the patch of mountain land he impulsively bought in a small North Carolina town. Most things have to be made. Ehle observes him as he goes about his labors. For instance, there is a scene comprised entirely of Mooney felling trees to make his cabin:
The work in The Land Breakers is never done, and by the time you have finished, you will have both a theoretical notion of farming in the late eighteenth century, and be vicariously exhausted.
Though Imy and Mooney are the first to arrive on the mountain, they are soon joined by others. There is Tinkler Harrison, a would-be King Lear of the hilltops, a slaveowner from Virginia who wants to be the focal point of this new settlement. With him is his daughter Lorry, who has been abandoned by her husband, and left with two young sons. Then there is the Plover clan, led by inept patriarch Ernest, whose guiding principle is to do as little work as possible. One of Ernest’s many children is Mina, a carefree young woman who gradually reveals a deeply-held sensitivity.
Ehle introduces us to these families, and many more, by utilizing a roving, omniscient third-person perspective. This allows us to get inside the thoughts and feelings, dreams and fears, of dozens of settlers. Characters who at first seem simple are shown to be far more complicated as the months and years begin to accumulate. Both the men and women are exceptionally well drawn.
Ehle’s prose is clear and compelling, with a true knack for evoking the mountains. You see the land as the characters see it. Despite the many ways it breaks their hearts, its beauty and promise takes hold and never lets go. The dialogue is also marvelous, with Ehle employing a distinct idiom filled with unique phrases and terminology.
As I mentioned above, this is not a goal-focused narrative. Events are not building up to a climactic moment. There is not a will-they-or-won’t-they love story, or a lurking villain that needs to be defeated. This is about people trying first to survive, and then to thrive. Still, it’s important to point out that there are some big set-pieces. There is a vicious bear hunt, a tragicomic stock drive (featuring a menagerie of pigs, chickens, and turkeys), and an animal-attack scene so disturbing that I actually stopped reading for a day.
One of the cornerstones of America’s foundational myth is that this country was built upon the backs of rugged individualists. Certainly, Mooney Wright seems to fit that mold. He is hardworking, ambitious, and self-reliant. Yet on his mountain, he soon realizes that he cannot do it alone. He might be able to stay alive, but that’s about all. It takes a community working together – whether that’s to raise a barn, birth a child, or bury the dead – to achieve any meaningful success. While Mooney and his neighbors might be distrustful of governments, laws, and distant authorities, they also learn an important truth: when the creatures all around you are baying for your blood, the strength of the wolf is in the pack.
- John Ehle, The Land Breakers
Anyone who loves reading lives with the discomforting reality that we are not given enough time on earth to finish all the books we should, much less all that we want. Recently, as I was looking at my sagging bookshelves, it occurred to me quite clearly that there was no way I was ever going to get to all the titles I’ve purchased. And that doesn’t even take into account the books I’m inevitably going to buy in the future, or the ones that I will miss completely. There are simply too few hours, and too many choices.
With that said, I sometimes wonder about all the great books I don’t even know exist.
John Ehle’s The Land Breakers is one I almost missed. I had never even heard of it until I saw it listed in the eclectic back catalogue of the New York Review of Books. Originally published in 1964, the NYRB reissued Ehle’s Appalachian classic in a handsome paperback in 2014. It is actually the first of seven “mountain novels” written by Ehle, probably the most famous of which is The Journey of August King.
When I first picked this up, I was expecting an archetypal frontier story, featuring rugged individuals heading west, clashing with the Indians and “civilizing” the wilderness. This assumption turned out to be entirely wrong. Despite occurring at approximately the same time period in which Daniel Boone and others were warring in nearby Kentucky (the novel takes place from 1779-1784), The Land Breakers is not interested in any conflict pitting man against man. Indeed, by the time the lead character – former indentured servant Mooney Wright – arrives in the mountains, the Indians have already been pushed west, and are barely mentioned. The antagonist here is nature itself, especially the wild animals: an unstoppable bear; packs of ferocious wolves; and nests of poisonous snakes.
More than anything, The Land Breakers resembles a grown-up version of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Little House on the Prairie series. It is process-oriented, rather than plot driven. Mooney has very little when he arrives on the patch of mountain land he impulsively bought in a small North Carolina town. Most things have to be made. Ehle observes him as he goes about his labors. For instance, there is a scene comprised entirely of Mooney felling trees to make his cabin:
One day he went to work on the oak, the roof-board tree. He drove the ax into the butt log and set his iron wedge into the crack. He tapped it in, widening the crack until he could get the gluts started. They were made of dogwood and were bigger than the wedge. He drove the gluts in deep with the maul he made from a branch of the tree. The maul was as thick as his thigh, and he had whittled it down to a handle at one end. He quartered the oak tree. He cut off the sap wood, then split off boards with the froe, driving it into the wet wood with a wood mallet. He cut off four thick boards for the door. As dusk began to settle, he began splitting off boards for the roof…
The work in The Land Breakers is never done, and by the time you have finished, you will have both a theoretical notion of farming in the late eighteenth century, and be vicariously exhausted.
Though Imy and Mooney are the first to arrive on the mountain, they are soon joined by others. There is Tinkler Harrison, a would-be King Lear of the hilltops, a slaveowner from Virginia who wants to be the focal point of this new settlement. With him is his daughter Lorry, who has been abandoned by her husband, and left with two young sons. Then there is the Plover clan, led by inept patriarch Ernest, whose guiding principle is to do as little work as possible. One of Ernest’s many children is Mina, a carefree young woman who gradually reveals a deeply-held sensitivity.
Ehle introduces us to these families, and many more, by utilizing a roving, omniscient third-person perspective. This allows us to get inside the thoughts and feelings, dreams and fears, of dozens of settlers. Characters who at first seem simple are shown to be far more complicated as the months and years begin to accumulate. Both the men and women are exceptionally well drawn.
Ehle’s prose is clear and compelling, with a true knack for evoking the mountains. You see the land as the characters see it. Despite the many ways it breaks their hearts, its beauty and promise takes hold and never lets go. The dialogue is also marvelous, with Ehle employing a distinct idiom filled with unique phrases and terminology.
As I mentioned above, this is not a goal-focused narrative. Events are not building up to a climactic moment. There is not a will-they-or-won’t-they love story, or a lurking villain that needs to be defeated. This is about people trying first to survive, and then to thrive. Still, it’s important to point out that there are some big set-pieces. There is a vicious bear hunt, a tragicomic stock drive (featuring a menagerie of pigs, chickens, and turkeys), and an animal-attack scene so disturbing that I actually stopped reading for a day.
One of the cornerstones of America’s foundational myth is that this country was built upon the backs of rugged individualists. Certainly, Mooney Wright seems to fit that mold. He is hardworking, ambitious, and self-reliant. Yet on his mountain, he soon realizes that he cannot do it alone. He might be able to stay alive, but that’s about all. It takes a community working together – whether that’s to raise a barn, birth a child, or bury the dead – to achieve any meaningful success. While Mooney and his neighbors might be distrustful of governments, laws, and distant authorities, they also learn an important truth: when the creatures all around you are baying for your blood, the strength of the wolf is in the pack.
December 17, 2023
4.5 stars
“A person becomes part of what he does, grows into what grows around him, and if he works the land, he comes to be the land, and owner of and slave to it.”
Once upon a time, I tried to grow a vegetable garden in my backyard. I drove to the gardening center in my air conditioned car, paid for seeds and starter plants with my credit card, and stopped to get some groceries at the supermarket – including fruits and vegetables, because who knows whether this garden thing will really work out or not. It’s just for fun anyway, right?! I dug up a patch of land in the backyard, planted the little seeds and plants, hooked up the gardening hose to the sprinkler, and crossed my fingers. I’d sit on the back patio on a nice summer night, admiring the progress of the garden over my takeout dinner from a local restaurant. Some days I had to drag myself out to that little garden patch and pull weeds, the sun beating down on me for the hour or so I had to spend out there once a week. I cursed that sun for making me sweat and the deer and rabbits for chewing on some of the plants. I consoled myself with an iced beverage. Eventually my hard work paid off and I had myself some nice yellow squash, zucchini, and some other such vegetables I can no longer quite recall. I had more than I could eat and gave away loads of it to friends and family. It was a hobby, not to be repeated the following year, because, well, I was too busy for that kind of manual labor …
“From here they could see mountains strewn in all directions, and it was awesome to consider the marvels and dens and torrents of this new country, to feel the loneliness of being here, yet at the same time the right of belonging here…”
My head would have hung in shame had I been a settler in a new land. The folks that populated this story of a hardscrabble life in the mountains of North Carolina during the late eighteenth century would have scoffed at my ineptitudes. These people had a dream to start fresh in a new place and to make something of the land. They were hard-working and determined. Well, to be fair, there were a couple of slackers in the group, and likely I would have been among these few. I’d have taken off not to go fishing but to read my novel by the babbling brook. I’d smell the corn pone baking from a mile away and head to the cottage with hopes of a handout. Stirring the meal and starting the fire on my own would have been tedious work; best leave this to the enterprising women of the bunch.
Seriously, though, I have so much admiration for the inhabitants of these tucked away corners of the earth. Far from civilization, they had to form communities from very little at all. Their enemies were the weather, bear, panthers, wolves, and the land itself as it was often unyielding and uncompromising. The seasons for them were not a matter of whether they could sunbathe or ice skate, but whether or not they would have enough food and supplies to actually survive. And like any modern day bunch, sometimes they were antagonistic towards one another. It takes harmony and goodwill to make a community survive and thrive, and oftentimes there were disagreements, hard feelings and frustration towards other members of the settlement. Love, too, could cause rivalries, hostilities, and distractions.
This is such an engaging story and the authenticity in the writing is evident. Author John Ehle knew all about this kind of life. He could trace his own ancestry straight back to this time and place. The people are myriad and imperfect but I rooted for every one of them. I so wanted all that backbreaking work and those dreams to come to fruition. It seems there is an entire set of these “Mountain Novels” so I don’t have to end my time in the North Carolina mountains just yet. I’m off to scour the used book sites once again.
“There’s no prettier sight and no prettier place than this one. It traps a man into staying, into building here; then it shows him that he doesn’t even possess his own cabin and fields. The valley is its own, he knew now. The valley and the beasts and the mountain and the snows and the water and the cliffs owned themselves yet. If he left here, in a few years there would be little sign that he had even come.”
“A person becomes part of what he does, grows into what grows around him, and if he works the land, he comes to be the land, and owner of and slave to it.”
Once upon a time, I tried to grow a vegetable garden in my backyard. I drove to the gardening center in my air conditioned car, paid for seeds and starter plants with my credit card, and stopped to get some groceries at the supermarket – including fruits and vegetables, because who knows whether this garden thing will really work out or not. It’s just for fun anyway, right?! I dug up a patch of land in the backyard, planted the little seeds and plants, hooked up the gardening hose to the sprinkler, and crossed my fingers. I’d sit on the back patio on a nice summer night, admiring the progress of the garden over my takeout dinner from a local restaurant. Some days I had to drag myself out to that little garden patch and pull weeds, the sun beating down on me for the hour or so I had to spend out there once a week. I cursed that sun for making me sweat and the deer and rabbits for chewing on some of the plants. I consoled myself with an iced beverage. Eventually my hard work paid off and I had myself some nice yellow squash, zucchini, and some other such vegetables I can no longer quite recall. I had more than I could eat and gave away loads of it to friends and family. It was a hobby, not to be repeated the following year, because, well, I was too busy for that kind of manual labor …
“From here they could see mountains strewn in all directions, and it was awesome to consider the marvels and dens and torrents of this new country, to feel the loneliness of being here, yet at the same time the right of belonging here…”
My head would have hung in shame had I been a settler in a new land. The folks that populated this story of a hardscrabble life in the mountains of North Carolina during the late eighteenth century would have scoffed at my ineptitudes. These people had a dream to start fresh in a new place and to make something of the land. They were hard-working and determined. Well, to be fair, there were a couple of slackers in the group, and likely I would have been among these few. I’d have taken off not to go fishing but to read my novel by the babbling brook. I’d smell the corn pone baking from a mile away and head to the cottage with hopes of a handout. Stirring the meal and starting the fire on my own would have been tedious work; best leave this to the enterprising women of the bunch.
Seriously, though, I have so much admiration for the inhabitants of these tucked away corners of the earth. Far from civilization, they had to form communities from very little at all. Their enemies were the weather, bear, panthers, wolves, and the land itself as it was often unyielding and uncompromising. The seasons for them were not a matter of whether they could sunbathe or ice skate, but whether or not they would have enough food and supplies to actually survive. And like any modern day bunch, sometimes they were antagonistic towards one another. It takes harmony and goodwill to make a community survive and thrive, and oftentimes there were disagreements, hard feelings and frustration towards other members of the settlement. Love, too, could cause rivalries, hostilities, and distractions.
This is such an engaging story and the authenticity in the writing is evident. Author John Ehle knew all about this kind of life. He could trace his own ancestry straight back to this time and place. The people are myriad and imperfect but I rooted for every one of them. I so wanted all that backbreaking work and those dreams to come to fruition. It seems there is an entire set of these “Mountain Novels” so I don’t have to end my time in the North Carolina mountains just yet. I’m off to scour the used book sites once again.
“There’s no prettier sight and no prettier place than this one. It traps a man into staying, into building here; then it shows him that he doesn’t even possess his own cabin and fields. The valley is its own, he knew now. The valley and the beasts and the mountain and the snows and the water and the cliffs owned themselves yet. If he left here, in a few years there would be little sign that he had even come.”
July 12, 2016
My father was raised in Boone, NC, in the far northwestern corner of the Appalachians of that state, about 30 miles from the Tennessee line. His parents had a hillside farm there, and I can just barely remember seeing my grandfather behind a plow being pulled by a mule. Plowing furrows on the side of a mountain takes some work, much different from a farm in the flatlands. This would have been in the late 1950's. I also remember some chickens, an old farmhouse, some apple trees, and blue skies and fresh mountain air.
The Land Breakers took me back 225 years from now, beginning in 1779, when the first settlers came up that mountainside to build a life and farm the land, to start families and carve out a piece of the brand new America. They were lucky to have a gun and an ax, the two things most necessary for survival. With those two things and enough sense and courage to make what they needed, plus a horse, a cow, a pig and a dog, they built a cabin for protection, killed deer and caught fish to eat til they could get crops in the ground, fought the bears and the wolves and the snakes and did what they had to do.
The hard work and determination of the settlers is almost beyond my scope of understanding. Yes, there were those among them who were lazy, or mean, or naive about what it would take to survive. Some generous men and women who helped out neighbors when needed, some stingy, sly men who wanted it all for themselves, and as always the case, some who just wanted to fiddle and sing, with never a thought for tomorrow. It seems that the people who make up a community come in all types and personalities, and that's something that hasn't changed in all these years. This book is also full of adventure and sickness and death and birth and hunger and love and some mighty tough people who wouldn't let any of those things beat them, because they had a future to build. These were the people who came before my grandfather behind the plow, the ancestors that made my father such a good man, and the reason that I have enough leisure time to read a book about them instead of working my fingers to the bone every minute of the day. These people were giants.
This one is the best book I have read this year.
The Land Breakers took me back 225 years from now, beginning in 1779, when the first settlers came up that mountainside to build a life and farm the land, to start families and carve out a piece of the brand new America. They were lucky to have a gun and an ax, the two things most necessary for survival. With those two things and enough sense and courage to make what they needed, plus a horse, a cow, a pig and a dog, they built a cabin for protection, killed deer and caught fish to eat til they could get crops in the ground, fought the bears and the wolves and the snakes and did what they had to do.
The hard work and determination of the settlers is almost beyond my scope of understanding. Yes, there were those among them who were lazy, or mean, or naive about what it would take to survive. Some generous men and women who helped out neighbors when needed, some stingy, sly men who wanted it all for themselves, and as always the case, some who just wanted to fiddle and sing, with never a thought for tomorrow. It seems that the people who make up a community come in all types and personalities, and that's something that hasn't changed in all these years. This book is also full of adventure and sickness and death and birth and hunger and love and some mighty tough people who wouldn't let any of those things beat them, because they had a future to build. These were the people who came before my grandfather behind the plow, the ancestors that made my father such a good man, and the reason that I have enough leisure time to read a book about them instead of working my fingers to the bone every minute of the day. These people were giants.
This one is the best book I have read this year.
October 14, 2021
4+ The Afterword written by novelist and educator Terry Roberts is a perfect summary of ‘The Land Breakers.’ Roberts writes “The Land Breakers is a saga in the ancient and dark sense of the word, descended from the Old Norse, so that it means in its essence a long story of heroic deeds, most especially deeds performed in battle. Appropriately, the Scandinavian origin of the word is invoked even in the setting of John Ehle’s novel, for the mountain territory into which he brings us along with his characters is dark and harsh. It is inhabited by beasts that Beowulf himself might have recognized and called by name.”
I would only have to break with Roberts’s opinion that readers would find this an alien world. Yes, it is different, especially to today’s modern city dwellers, but for me, with my bucolic upbringing, not alien, for I recognize the cadence of country speak and the bond between flesh and land. The struggles and hardships that take place in this story are conflicts that were well known to many of our ancestors. Man (and woman) versus nature are well represented here. Set during the years 1779 to 1784, the hardships were real and daily, the struggles were for survival. The people were married to the seasons and knew the timings of sunrise and sunset and what could be accomplished in a day. However, even the best-laid plans can go awry, and when you’re dealing with weather, beasts, and the contrariness of human nature, you may find, as some of these settlers did, that the worst of times will come. How will you meet those times? There’s a toughness baked into these characters but the mountain land of western North Carolina, where this story takes place, could have broken even the most resilient in those early days.
I loved John Ehle’s writing, his depiction of the first white settlers in this area. Mooney and Imy Wright were Scotch Irish, both apprenticed at age eleven to the same family. At age twenty-one, they receive an allotted amount of goods and take their leave. Married for only a few years, they’ve come to western North Carolina looking for land on which to build a home. The chain of blue mountains off in the distance looks promising but Mooney prefers settled land that he can farm. Only wild animals there, they are told. When a Morganton shopkeeper offers them six hundred forty acres of bottomland up in those distant mountains for the money they have, they agree. They’ve been looking for land for three years as they’ve trekked south and this is the best deal they’ve come across.
John Ehle peoples the landscape with the neighbors that will soon arrive. Through their actions, speech, and internal dialog, I came to know them and understand some of their motivations or the lack thereof. Ernest Plover is on the lacking side, but he has a bevy of girls and an industrious wife to make up for it. Plover’s oldest girl, Belle, is married to her uncle, Tinkler Harrison. Harrison is a dominating patriarchal figure that generates little sympathy from me until the last few pages of the novel. Tinkler Harrison’s daughter, Lorry becomes my favorite character. Her quiet strength is unassuming. Since her husband, Lacey, disappeared several years ago, Lorry has taken on the responsibility of raising their two boys. Lorry’s romance provides some high-stakes conflict.
A wonderful book that took me some time to read, but that is down to this reader and no reflection on the quality of this superb tale.
I would only have to break with Roberts’s opinion that readers would find this an alien world. Yes, it is different, especially to today’s modern city dwellers, but for me, with my bucolic upbringing, not alien, for I recognize the cadence of country speak and the bond between flesh and land. The struggles and hardships that take place in this story are conflicts that were well known to many of our ancestors. Man (and woman) versus nature are well represented here. Set during the years 1779 to 1784, the hardships were real and daily, the struggles were for survival. The people were married to the seasons and knew the timings of sunrise and sunset and what could be accomplished in a day. However, even the best-laid plans can go awry, and when you’re dealing with weather, beasts, and the contrariness of human nature, you may find, as some of these settlers did, that the worst of times will come. How will you meet those times? There’s a toughness baked into these characters but the mountain land of western North Carolina, where this story takes place, could have broken even the most resilient in those early days.
I loved John Ehle’s writing, his depiction of the first white settlers in this area. Mooney and Imy Wright were Scotch Irish, both apprenticed at age eleven to the same family. At age twenty-one, they receive an allotted amount of goods and take their leave. Married for only a few years, they’ve come to western North Carolina looking for land on which to build a home. The chain of blue mountains off in the distance looks promising but Mooney prefers settled land that he can farm. Only wild animals there, they are told. When a Morganton shopkeeper offers them six hundred forty acres of bottomland up in those distant mountains for the money they have, they agree. They’ve been looking for land for three years as they’ve trekked south and this is the best deal they’ve come across.
John Ehle peoples the landscape with the neighbors that will soon arrive. Through their actions, speech, and internal dialog, I came to know them and understand some of their motivations or the lack thereof. Ernest Plover is on the lacking side, but he has a bevy of girls and an industrious wife to make up for it. Plover’s oldest girl, Belle, is married to her uncle, Tinkler Harrison. Harrison is a dominating patriarchal figure that generates little sympathy from me until the last few pages of the novel. Tinkler Harrison’s daughter, Lorry becomes my favorite character. Her quiet strength is unassuming. Since her husband, Lacey, disappeared several years ago, Lorry has taken on the responsibility of raising their two boys. Lorry’s romance provides some high-stakes conflict.
A wonderful book that took me some time to read, but that is down to this reader and no reflection on the quality of this superb tale.
September 21, 2021
...nature has a mean streak in her.
Set in the NC mountains in the 1780's and one by one, a handful of families settle in to make their homes. They are living off the land in the very truest sense. Everything must be made by hand, with nothing wasted or thrown away. Vines are used for string, as a belt, to tie one's hair back. Gourds are used for carrying and storing, a turkey wing is employed to fan the fire. With their crops always at the mercy of the weather, their livestock a constant draw to bears, wolves, and other wild animals. There is not even a rudiment of a general store. No doctor. You'll feel for these people as they endure the hardships that will be thrown their way. Their strength and endurance are unmatched.
If this kind of thing interests you at all, you will want to get ahold of a copy of this. It was exceptional.
Set in the NC mountains in the 1780's and one by one, a handful of families settle in to make their homes. They are living off the land in the very truest sense. Everything must be made by hand, with nothing wasted or thrown away. Vines are used for string, as a belt, to tie one's hair back. Gourds are used for carrying and storing, a turkey wing is employed to fan the fire. With their crops always at the mercy of the weather, their livestock a constant draw to bears, wolves, and other wild animals. There is not even a rudiment of a general store. No doctor. You'll feel for these people as they endure the hardships that will be thrown their way. Their strength and endurance are unmatched.
If this kind of thing interests you at all, you will want to get ahold of a copy of this. It was exceptional.
August 28, 2021
I have never in my life read a book that made me more bone weary or stirred more admiration in me for the pioneer spirit than John Erle’s The Land Breakers. In fact, the land, you would think, would break these men and women, instead of the other way around. With all its beauty, it is viciously cruel and heartbreaking.
At the beginning of the book, Mooney Wright and his wife Imy arrive in the mountains of North Carolina, searching for land to homestead, and purchase a piece of valley land, high in the mountains. That this will be a tale riddled with tragedy is apparent almost immediately, as Imy does not survive the first year and Mooney finds himself alone and despondent, with no one now to share his work or his ambitions. In his grief, we see that settling this land is a matter of not only starting, but starting over and over.
He could not quite come to terms with work again. He who had worked always, who had liked work more than resting, who had once gone to bed each night thinking of what work he might do tomorrow, who had come to this land with daily plans for it, did little with the land. He had no ambitions for it.
Shortly behind Mooney and Imy, leaving Virginia behind, come another, wealthier family, the Harrisons. Tinkler Harrison fancies himself a leader and empire builder and he brings his big dreams and better means to Mooney’s valley. His daughter, Lorry, deserted by her husband, drags her loneliness and her two young sons behind him into a wilderness that needs constant taming; and his brother-in-law, Ernest Plover, brings his wife and his family of girls. What follows is a tale of endurance that leaves the reader awed and speechless.
One of the most intriguing characters Erle gifts us with is Ernest’s daughter, Mina. I was fascinated by her mixture of innocence and knowledge, her vulnerability and capability, and the growth we see in her from her beginnings in the valley to the end of the story. In fact, the women in this book are one of its true strengths. Erle writes them with admiration and compassion, and he gives them their due. It takes a man to clear the fields, but it takes a woman to sustain life.
There’s nothing proper about starting a country. Anything having to do with a birthing is bloody. A birthing pains. Even getting a homestead started pains, for nature doesn’t allow births without suffering.
Erle never allows us to forget that we are watching the birth of something mighty. The birth of a home, a community, a town, and indeed a nation. This is the price that was paid, he seems to say, try to appreciate it.
We all lost something, but we go on. Now and agin we lost what’s dear, and the wound is on us. We carry many a wound by the time we get to aging, but I’m not afraid of scars, and I’m not fireside-tied yet, needing warmth, neither. I’m not old yet.
I read that thinking how quickly this life would age you, how tired you would be when you had finished the milking and milling, the cleaning and cooking, the hoeing and grubbing, the cold-water washing and the hot water of the outdoors when she washed clothes, by soap-making and thread-spinning and cloth-weaving, by wood-toting and skin-scraping,by stock-tending and the care of the family. This is the stuff our grandparents were made of. The stuff we lost along the way, so that we complain of how long it takes our hot water to reach the bath in the morning, or that it is laundry day again and we need to sort clothes and pop them into a washer that will play us a diddy when it is time to transfer them to the dryer, or that we just haven’t anything to fix for supper and will have to go out or order in.
Erle is a masterful writer, who brings you into the valley and makes you feel you are one of these people, intimate with their struggle. Everyone should read this book, if only to feel the weight of the accomplishment of our ancestors, who broke this land with their will and their bare hands and were not broken by it.
At the beginning of the book, Mooney Wright and his wife Imy arrive in the mountains of North Carolina, searching for land to homestead, and purchase a piece of valley land, high in the mountains. That this will be a tale riddled with tragedy is apparent almost immediately, as Imy does not survive the first year and Mooney finds himself alone and despondent, with no one now to share his work or his ambitions. In his grief, we see that settling this land is a matter of not only starting, but starting over and over.
He could not quite come to terms with work again. He who had worked always, who had liked work more than resting, who had once gone to bed each night thinking of what work he might do tomorrow, who had come to this land with daily plans for it, did little with the land. He had no ambitions for it.
Shortly behind Mooney and Imy, leaving Virginia behind, come another, wealthier family, the Harrisons. Tinkler Harrison fancies himself a leader and empire builder and he brings his big dreams and better means to Mooney’s valley. His daughter, Lorry, deserted by her husband, drags her loneliness and her two young sons behind him into a wilderness that needs constant taming; and his brother-in-law, Ernest Plover, brings his wife and his family of girls. What follows is a tale of endurance that leaves the reader awed and speechless.
One of the most intriguing characters Erle gifts us with is Ernest’s daughter, Mina. I was fascinated by her mixture of innocence and knowledge, her vulnerability and capability, and the growth we see in her from her beginnings in the valley to the end of the story. In fact, the women in this book are one of its true strengths. Erle writes them with admiration and compassion, and he gives them their due. It takes a man to clear the fields, but it takes a woman to sustain life.
There’s nothing proper about starting a country. Anything having to do with a birthing is bloody. A birthing pains. Even getting a homestead started pains, for nature doesn’t allow births without suffering.
Erle never allows us to forget that we are watching the birth of something mighty. The birth of a home, a community, a town, and indeed a nation. This is the price that was paid, he seems to say, try to appreciate it.
We all lost something, but we go on. Now and agin we lost what’s dear, and the wound is on us. We carry many a wound by the time we get to aging, but I’m not afraid of scars, and I’m not fireside-tied yet, needing warmth, neither. I’m not old yet.
I read that thinking how quickly this life would age you, how tired you would be when you had finished the milking and milling, the cleaning and cooking, the hoeing and grubbing, the cold-water washing and the hot water of the outdoors when she washed clothes, by soap-making and thread-spinning and cloth-weaving, by wood-toting and skin-scraping,by stock-tending and the care of the family. This is the stuff our grandparents were made of. The stuff we lost along the way, so that we complain of how long it takes our hot water to reach the bath in the morning, or that it is laundry day again and we need to sort clothes and pop them into a washer that will play us a diddy when it is time to transfer them to the dryer, or that we just haven’t anything to fix for supper and will have to go out or order in.
Erle is a masterful writer, who brings you into the valley and makes you feel you are one of these people, intimate with their struggle. Everyone should read this book, if only to feel the weight of the accomplishment of our ancestors, who broke this land with their will and their bare hands and were not broken by it.
August 19, 2021
Who among us can truly understand what it took for our forefathers to build a sustaining life from nothing but the land in which they chose to settle? I’d say none of us really understands the heart and grit and strength of mind and body it took to endure physical pain, excruciating hard work and utter loss as those who came before us did. In John Ehle’s The Land Breakers he writes of those first settlers who embarked upon the raw and rugged mountains of North Carolina where they sought to create a settlement that would eventually prosper them. The authenticity of the natural world and the people he creates give proof that Ehle is a man who knows and understands the place and language. Ehle’s own mother’s family can claim to be one of the first families to inhabit and settle the western mountains of North Carolina. Ehle grew up here and so holds authority to this region.
Taking the reader back to 1779 to a primitive and unforgiving place, Ehle carves out a grim and brutal existence experienced by the families and people he brought together. The hardships and struggles for survival will absolutely unhinge you and cause your heart to flutter. You’ll wonder why people kept trying again when the crops failed and when the wolves and bears killed the livestock and animals. How did they endure the impossibilities of this life, the terrors of living in a wild and untamed place so far from any other people. You will come to grips with the fact that the life we know today came with a price that was bravely chosen by our ancestors.
The mountain wanted the old way still, and he who changes what is ordered and old and set is a man who grasps the lion’s jaw.
Bears, wolves, snakes, panthers - these are the original inhabitants of this mountain land. When people threaten their world, the animals will do all they will in order to survive themselves. This novel demonstrates the war between the natural and the human worlds and what happens when they collide. One of the most gut-wrenching scenes I’ve ever read takes place in a cabin on this mountain. There is also the struggle to form a community out of a hodgepodge of people. This array of folks don’t always see things the same way as some desire prosperity and will work themselves to the bone to see it happen while others will lay around unwilling to lift a finger to work, playing music and drinking whisky. There are those who help their neighbors and those who only want to help themselves. No matter the disparateness of the settlers, the struggles were the same - building cabins, planting crops, making tools, grinding grain, making clothes, keeping safe from the wild animals.
I can’t say enough about this novel. I now have a great appreciation for my ancestors who came from Scotland to the hills of Kentucky to start a new life. This is the first of Ehle’s Mountain novel series of which there are 7. I plan to read them all eventually. I believe he takes the ancestors of these folks through the eras of history - the Civil War, the building of the railroad, and through the 1930’s. I can’t wait to dive in.
The family was a machine of matching, meshed cogs. It was not that the family was making a machine they could use; the family was the machine. The family and the clearing and the crops and the stock and the tools were part of the same thing. The family and the place were the same thing and could not be separated one from the other. One could not understand the family without knowing about the land and their work on it and plans for it, and one could not know the land with any real understanding without knowing this family of people.
Taking the reader back to 1779 to a primitive and unforgiving place, Ehle carves out a grim and brutal existence experienced by the families and people he brought together. The hardships and struggles for survival will absolutely unhinge you and cause your heart to flutter. You’ll wonder why people kept trying again when the crops failed and when the wolves and bears killed the livestock and animals. How did they endure the impossibilities of this life, the terrors of living in a wild and untamed place so far from any other people. You will come to grips with the fact that the life we know today came with a price that was bravely chosen by our ancestors.
The mountain wanted the old way still, and he who changes what is ordered and old and set is a man who grasps the lion’s jaw.
Bears, wolves, snakes, panthers - these are the original inhabitants of this mountain land. When people threaten their world, the animals will do all they will in order to survive themselves. This novel demonstrates the war between the natural and the human worlds and what happens when they collide. One of the most gut-wrenching scenes I’ve ever read takes place in a cabin on this mountain. There is also the struggle to form a community out of a hodgepodge of people. This array of folks don’t always see things the same way as some desire prosperity and will work themselves to the bone to see it happen while others will lay around unwilling to lift a finger to work, playing music and drinking whisky. There are those who help their neighbors and those who only want to help themselves. No matter the disparateness of the settlers, the struggles were the same - building cabins, planting crops, making tools, grinding grain, making clothes, keeping safe from the wild animals.
I can’t say enough about this novel. I now have a great appreciation for my ancestors who came from Scotland to the hills of Kentucky to start a new life. This is the first of Ehle’s Mountain novel series of which there are 7. I plan to read them all eventually. I believe he takes the ancestors of these folks through the eras of history - the Civil War, the building of the railroad, and through the 1930’s. I can’t wait to dive in.
The family was a machine of matching, meshed cogs. It was not that the family was making a machine they could use; the family was the machine. The family and the clearing and the crops and the stock and the tools were part of the same thing. The family and the place were the same thing and could not be separated one from the other. One could not understand the family without knowing about the land and their work on it and plans for it, and one could not know the land with any real understanding without knowing this family of people.
September 12, 2016
What to say about The Land Breakers? I had a library copy of this book but ended up loving it so much that I bought a kindle copy to have and keep. This is definitely a favorite and had the feeling of authenticity while reading that I felt while reading The Tall Woman and The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War. When historical fiction is done well it is illuminating, educational, and can be uplifting even if harrowing.
There is a bear hunt that is heart-stopping. There was really no way to know the outcome, much as I knew what I wanted to happen. The people in this small "community" are fighting the elements in a very basic way but also seem to have moments of joy in nature. There is a struggle here to create a community--a struggle against a difficult and unyielding mountain land unfriendly to crops; a struggle against the elements themselves; a struggle against wild animals who frequently attack and steal or injure their precious food animals and potential profit or injure them personally; a struggle to create a sense of community when not all the people in the valley have the same aims or goals, some work from dawn to dusk as hard as their bodies will allow while others fritter away the day watching their children do minor work. And then there are opposing visions for the future. So much to battle in the 1780s when nothing at all is secure.
All in all, a wonderful book, written with what seems to be a natural idiom of the place and time. So wonderful that NYRB has released this book for a new audience and that I was introduced to it by On the Southern Literary Trail as a group read.
A 5+ novel highly recommended for any reader who enjoys historical fiction, American history, American Southern literature, etc
There is a bear hunt that is heart-stopping. There was really no way to know the outcome, much as I knew what I wanted to happen. The people in this small "community" are fighting the elements in a very basic way but also seem to have moments of joy in nature. There is a struggle here to create a community--a struggle against a difficult and unyielding mountain land unfriendly to crops; a struggle against the elements themselves; a struggle against wild animals who frequently attack and steal or injure their precious food animals and potential profit or injure them personally; a struggle to create a sense of community when not all the people in the valley have the same aims or goals, some work from dawn to dusk as hard as their bodies will allow while others fritter away the day watching their children do minor work. And then there are opposing visions for the future. So much to battle in the 1780s when nothing at all is secure.
All in all, a wonderful book, written with what seems to be a natural idiom of the place and time. So wonderful that NYRB has released this book for a new audience and that I was introduced to it by On the Southern Literary Trail as a group read.
A 5+ novel highly recommended for any reader who enjoys historical fiction, American history, American Southern literature, etc
October 5, 2016
The New York Review Book group chose this story originally written by John Ehle in 1964 to be republished in 2014 calling it an important book that broke fresh ground and opened a new world for Southern and Appalachian fiction. Ehle , with ancestry traceable to one of the first three families to settle in the untamed western mountains of North Carolina certainly seems to have a good understanding of the struggles of those first brave souls who took up residence there. This, the first book of seven in The Mountain Series, tells the story of a young Irish immigrant couple Mooney and Imy, who after finishing their indentured servitude, wander into a raggedy settlement and decide to put down roots. I've often said I would have embraced a kinder gentler time, well this certainly was not it !! Gardening and raising a few farm animals can be a fun avocation to share with the Grandkids, but when your survival depends on what you harvest it's a whole different ballgame. While working from dawn to dusk these folk barely had time to bury their dead, which without medicine and such they did with some regularity. There are some really great characters here, who represent a group of inspirational people, those who had the courage to first break the land, in a time where crops and livestock were lifeblood and drought, pestilence, and wolves were literally either at (or threatening to be at) the door. I found it maybe just slightly long on agriculture, chores, and hunting, and perhaps a bit short on emotional issues, which quite seriously they really didn't have the luxury of time to dwell upon. Every once in a while we should read something that makes us better appreciate the lives of those who have gone before us !!
4 stars- Sept On the Southern Literary Trail
4 stars- Sept On the Southern Literary Trail
January 26, 2011
I doubt anyone will bother reading my reviews, but if they do, I imagine they'll think I never read a book I didn't love based on my last batch. Regardless, I'm sincere when I say that The Land Breakers is one of the most beautiful yet plainly-written novels I've ever read. I feel like I learned more about American history from reading this book than I have gained from years of history classes, and quite honestly, I think I gained more insight into the true meaning of living off the land than I ever did trying to muddle through Thoreau. There are so many highlights that it's hard to single one out, but I must say that the epic bear hunt near the end moved me to tears.
October 18, 2016
I absolutely loved this book. I devoured it. Finished the story, read the epilogue, and stopped only after reading all the testimonials on the back cover. It is a saga full of adventure and made interesting by all of the adversity faced by pioneers, homesteaders, land breakers. Powerful determined people with no fall back route. Either conquer the land or die by failure. It is the history of America spotlighted in just one particular region, but it is also the great universal - the dominating spirit of our ancestors. Wonderful
November 5, 2021
I had to pause sometimes while reading this novel to remember the time period the author, John Ehle, was describing. I'm accustomed to reading about American settlers moving into the Midwest (Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri) during the 1800s. This book describes a group of people trying to form a settlement in the mountains of North Carolina from 1779 to 1784. The whole atmosphere of this story is different. My mind's eye had to continually switch back from coonskin/cowboy hats to tricorn hats.
These hardworking people were isolated with a capital I. They vaguely heard news about a war going on against England but they weren't much interested. Their crops, neighbors, weather and wildlife (especially wolves and bears picking off their livestock) were their main concern. One huge, hell-raising bear in particular had a major role in the plot. The author made a point of saying its fur was brown, not black. I guess grizzlies at that time roamed the eastern mountains (?).
I loved the characters who took the time to look out over their valley and mountain and appreciate them for their beauty - not just for their potential to create wealth. The love stories were raw and lovely. Every minute of reading this book was a treat. Except for maybe the one scene including a pile of writhing snakes.
These hardworking people were isolated with a capital I. They vaguely heard news about a war going on against England but they weren't much interested. Their crops, neighbors, weather and wildlife (especially wolves and bears picking off their livestock) were their main concern. One huge, hell-raising bear in particular had a major role in the plot. The author made a point of saying its fur was brown, not black. I guess grizzlies at that time roamed the eastern mountains (?).
I loved the characters who took the time to look out over their valley and mountain and appreciate them for their beauty - not just for their potential to create wealth. The love stories were raw and lovely. Every minute of reading this book was a treat. Except for maybe the one scene including a pile of writhing snakes.
January 29, 2022
"There's nothing proper about starting a country. Anything having to do with a birthing is bloody."
Easily one of the great American novels and one that if you write, you'll find yourself wishing you'd wrote it the whole time you're reading the entire goddamn thing!
Quick comparisons come to mind, Growth of the Soil for obvious reasons, but this is so much better than that, so much more poetically written, quiet, and devastatingly beautiful at times...maybe a little of James Dickey thrown in there, or Zola, for the nature. I dunno. Just read it, I say, there really is nothing to not love: a story of wanderers into the mountains of western North Carolina who try to settle there during the Revolutionary War. There's love, loss, bears, and returnees from the grave (not literally), but most of all Ehle gives us a little sliver of life not how we'd like, but how it comes, and how it persists.
Way to go, NYRB!
Easily one of the great American novels and one that if you write, you'll find yourself wishing you'd wrote it the whole time you're reading the entire goddamn thing!
Quick comparisons come to mind, Growth of the Soil for obvious reasons, but this is so much better than that, so much more poetically written, quiet, and devastatingly beautiful at times...maybe a little of James Dickey thrown in there, or Zola, for the nature. I dunno. Just read it, I say, there really is nothing to not love: a story of wanderers into the mountains of western North Carolina who try to settle there during the Revolutionary War. There's love, loss, bears, and returnees from the grave (not literally), but most of all Ehle gives us a little sliver of life not how we'd like, but how it comes, and how it persists.
Way to go, NYRB!
March 21, 2022
(3.75) The ranking system here at Goodreads has always been a trouble for me. If you look at my average rating, it's generally in the 3.75-3.80 range because the majority of the books I rate are 4's. If there was a way to rate books in increments of .25 or .5, you'd probably think I only enjoyed a book from time to time, but what the hell does that matter? These are my feelings aren't they?
When it comes to novels, I try to engage as much as I possibly can. Perhaps I sometimes choose the wrong ones at the wrong times or the right ones at the wrong times or the right ones that I don't like until a certain moment and then I'm torn. How do I rate this if I wasn't truly engaged until a specific moment? And like a silly, cliched lightning bolt, I get hit?
John Ehle's "The Land Breakers" is one of those books that I was on the edge of truly enjoying many times, but couldn't really get over the proverbial hump until the last 50-100 pages. It didn't hit me hard like some have, but I enjoyed it a lot more. It took me a lot longer than it should have, but I can say I never truly was bored with it. The majority of it at the beginning reminded me of Knut Hamsun's "Growth of the Soil", but with much better prose; the story of two solitary characters making their way to somewhere new and calling it their own. Using their bare hands, they work the land until tragedy strikes and then the book takes on a somewhat Steinbeck-ian theme, Appalachian style.
In my travels recently to Ehle's birth town of Asheville, North Carolina, you can see the influence he has all over the region. Any small, out of the way, independent bookstore in the region has his works displayed proudly on a shelf or two..or three. Many of these you can't find any other place, than perhaps Amazon or Ebay, but he's there. Not his face, but his words. His proud Appalachian descriptions of a land and people that lived wildly in its wilderness and became part of its history.
A couple of my favorite passages are as follows:
"He lay there reviewing every thought his mind had ever held about her and the boys, and the farm they were making. He had not felt so lonely, not felt so thrown away from his life moorings since he had been put out of his mother's care when a boy, put on a ship and sent to sea. This land is like the sea, he thought, untamed like it, rolling high like it, curing in heavy waves like it, and he knew his life here had now come crashing down, like the sea, shattering about him."
"A man dreams what he dreams, that's all, and might be anything at all, for he's all tied up with lies, anyhow and worries. My Lord, we come out of a narrow opening in a woman and try to get our eyes to see something, not knowing at all what world is, or our parents are, or we are. And now I'm nigh to old-age death and I don't know yet what the world is, or I am. I know it's been a pleasure to be alive for these years, though I don't know what being alive is. I might very well die in this chair afore I ever stop looking at that river, but I don't know what death is. Some say it's angels in Heaven, but I don't have any more use for angels than I have for a lame horse. Sometimes I hear tell about angel voices singing. What do they sing? Do they sing about work, about the plowing and planting? Do they sing about this valley when the blooms open out? Do they sing about that river? Can they sing better than that river can? Do they plant crops and watch it rain and watch growth come? Do they harrow the fields with a pine bough, like you, or use a harrow with locust teeth like me, or do they use a harrow with gold teeth, or some such foolish contraption, or turn soil with a gold-tipped plow?"
"No need to talk as if you're about to die, Mr. Harrison," Mooney said, for he felt he ought to say something like that.
"In one dream the other night, I was going back through the cord into the belly of my mama. That's a sign of coming death, ain't it?"
"I don't know what dreams mean.""
It may be a while before I encounter John again, yet the story will remain on my mind for some time.
When it comes to novels, I try to engage as much as I possibly can. Perhaps I sometimes choose the wrong ones at the wrong times or the right ones at the wrong times or the right ones that I don't like until a certain moment and then I'm torn. How do I rate this if I wasn't truly engaged until a specific moment? And like a silly, cliched lightning bolt, I get hit?
John Ehle's "The Land Breakers" is one of those books that I was on the edge of truly enjoying many times, but couldn't really get over the proverbial hump until the last 50-100 pages. It didn't hit me hard like some have, but I enjoyed it a lot more. It took me a lot longer than it should have, but I can say I never truly was bored with it. The majority of it at the beginning reminded me of Knut Hamsun's "Growth of the Soil", but with much better prose; the story of two solitary characters making their way to somewhere new and calling it their own. Using their bare hands, they work the land until tragedy strikes and then the book takes on a somewhat Steinbeck-ian theme, Appalachian style.
In my travels recently to Ehle's birth town of Asheville, North Carolina, you can see the influence he has all over the region. Any small, out of the way, independent bookstore in the region has his works displayed proudly on a shelf or two..or three. Many of these you can't find any other place, than perhaps Amazon or Ebay, but he's there. Not his face, but his words. His proud Appalachian descriptions of a land and people that lived wildly in its wilderness and became part of its history.
A couple of my favorite passages are as follows:
"He lay there reviewing every thought his mind had ever held about her and the boys, and the farm they were making. He had not felt so lonely, not felt so thrown away from his life moorings since he had been put out of his mother's care when a boy, put on a ship and sent to sea. This land is like the sea, he thought, untamed like it, rolling high like it, curing in heavy waves like it, and he knew his life here had now come crashing down, like the sea, shattering about him."
"A man dreams what he dreams, that's all, and might be anything at all, for he's all tied up with lies, anyhow and worries. My Lord, we come out of a narrow opening in a woman and try to get our eyes to see something, not knowing at all what world is, or our parents are, or we are. And now I'm nigh to old-age death and I don't know yet what the world is, or I am. I know it's been a pleasure to be alive for these years, though I don't know what being alive is. I might very well die in this chair afore I ever stop looking at that river, but I don't know what death is. Some say it's angels in Heaven, but I don't have any more use for angels than I have for a lame horse. Sometimes I hear tell about angel voices singing. What do they sing? Do they sing about work, about the plowing and planting? Do they sing about this valley when the blooms open out? Do they sing about that river? Can they sing better than that river can? Do they plant crops and watch it rain and watch growth come? Do they harrow the fields with a pine bough, like you, or use a harrow with locust teeth like me, or do they use a harrow with gold teeth, or some such foolish contraption, or turn soil with a gold-tipped plow?"
"No need to talk as if you're about to die, Mr. Harrison," Mooney said, for he felt he ought to say something like that.
"In one dream the other night, I was going back through the cord into the belly of my mama. That's a sign of coming death, ain't it?"
"I don't know what dreams mean.""
It may be a while before I encounter John again, yet the story will remain on my mind for some time.
March 26, 2010
The Land Breakers is a great American novel, way beyond anything most New York literary icons have produced. And that is only one of several remarkable novels, though the one a reader new to Ehle should begin with.” Michael Ondaatje
I couldn't say it any better. This novel has great characters, great stories, and the historical setting is a story in itself.
When you finish the book, you will feel like any of the characters might pass by, and you'd just strike up a conversation. In fact, I've been keeping my eyes open.
I intend to read the series (and anything else by Ehle I can get my hands on).
I couldn't say it any better. This novel has great characters, great stories, and the historical setting is a story in itself.
When you finish the book, you will feel like any of the characters might pass by, and you'd just strike up a conversation. In fact, I've been keeping my eyes open.
I intend to read the series (and anything else by Ehle I can get my hands on).
May 13, 2015
Dialect of language and stark, yet practical, sensibilities of the early Western N. Carolina settlers during the 1780's center the tones of this tale. It's filled with context of rawest nature and seasons within the wild valley before the previously untilled flats and slope. It follows, basically, the 3 separate original families of settlers over a period of their earliest introduction to their Appalachian working homestead years. Men, women and children in their elemental sense of survival and production for sustenance. And hopefully an improvement from their entire poverty. The bonding and the methods of material success or failure! Every action of practical application and relationship for work and association set in fresh country and physical life mode. I would have given it another star for its pure beauty, if the story itself was a little less difficult to follow. Well worth the read. 3.5 stars to be accurate. If some of the more obscure characters were developed I would have given it a 4. For practical day to day actions and struggles in every physical sense of "daily doing" it is a 5.
August 29, 2025
When I started to read The Land Breakers, I hadn’t yet realized that the book tells a story that would be parallel to that of my maternal 6th great grandfather, who sometime between 1754 and 1764 migrated from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to Rowan County, North Carolina after his wife died in a Typhoid epidemic. He took his six remaining kids, ages 3 to 20, undoubtedly down the Great Wagon Road which led from Philadelphia to Salem and Salisbury, NC., and further south. Being clannish by nature, they travelled in a caravan of friends and other family.
My ancestors settled near the confluence South Yadkin River and Snow Creek in Iredell County, North Carolina. Unlike the story of Mooney and Imy and the other Land Breakers, which takes place from 1779 to 1784, my ancestors colonized the area earlier, but probably on flatter land and with their Scotch Irish friends and other family not too distant from them. Nevertheless, it was virgin wilderness and I am certain that it was no easy life to clear the land, build the first cabins and raise crops and stock in a wilderness. This book describes some of the hardships they may have faced. It was also a time of Native American raids and the Revolutionary War, only briefly touched upon in this book. By 1805, my 4th great grandfather had migrated to Wilson County, Tennessee, with another large party of family, and by 1833, they were in Dickson County, TN.
So, this book really resonated with my interest in my own family history, and gaining a sense of life in that area not too far away from where the story’s settlement was located. Although my ancestors eventually prospered there, The Land Breakers is largely a story about loss, determination in the face of hardship and tragedy and the relationship of the settlers to the land.
“ One could not understand the family, without knowing about this land, and their work on it, and plans for it, and one could not know the land with any real understanding without knowing this family of people. They were dusty with the land; the grid of the land was in them. Their work, which was done together, was the chief meaning of their family lives.“
When Mooney observes that Imy was up before dawn every day, he muses, “ How she knew he didn’t know, but always, as she got the fire blazing well, dawn began to appear upriver, as if she were the one who had awakened it. But it was not her doing, he knew. The dawn was constant; it was an old thing and had come on its own. Not even the will and whispers of the mountain could change it. The truth was not that Imy called it, but that she had lived so close to the order of life that she heard it called.”
The first tragic loss is the death of Imy, which is foretold in the first Chapter. “ She had helped him too much. A woman wasn’t made to do clearing. She had helped cut trees and pull brush and burn off. Maybe that was it, but in the brush smoke had been the pained spirit of his place, and it had got inside her, and was expanding outward, smoldering, stifling her. It was stealing her away from him at the start of their work and adventure. He was losing her, the body and presence and affection of her, and there was no one else in the place, or in his life.”
Her death is sorrowfully mourned, but it is only the first loss. The mountain throws at the settlers bears, wolves, panthers, snakes, weather, loneliness, longing, maladies and accidents, and of course conflicts between people as the settlement grew. Mooney’s dog was slit open by a bear.
“The ground was so cold, they could not bury it deep, but they did as best they could. They put the dog near Imy’s grave, and marked the place with the rock. The dog had not been a brave one; the noises and threats of the wilderness had frightened it from the start, but it had been friendly, and had given warning to them countless times. It would be more difficult to get along in this wild country without the dog to scent and hear and see for them.”
The losses mount throughout the novel, including human and economic loss, but there is also their determination to persevere in spite of the losses. The author’s storytelling compels the reader to keep on. The novel ends on a somewhat hopeful note as the mountain community becomes more populous and new families are started.
“He looked up at the dark mountain. Another small house and family will be set against it, he thought, close to the wildness of it, the merciless, the pitiless mind of it, there in the shadow of it.“
This was a five star read for me, and even without reference to my family history, it would be that kind of book, because it tells a larger story of what it took to tame this country that became the United States.
My ancestors settled near the confluence South Yadkin River and Snow Creek in Iredell County, North Carolina. Unlike the story of Mooney and Imy and the other Land Breakers, which takes place from 1779 to 1784, my ancestors colonized the area earlier, but probably on flatter land and with their Scotch Irish friends and other family not too distant from them. Nevertheless, it was virgin wilderness and I am certain that it was no easy life to clear the land, build the first cabins and raise crops and stock in a wilderness. This book describes some of the hardships they may have faced. It was also a time of Native American raids and the Revolutionary War, only briefly touched upon in this book. By 1805, my 4th great grandfather had migrated to Wilson County, Tennessee, with another large party of family, and by 1833, they were in Dickson County, TN.
So, this book really resonated with my interest in my own family history, and gaining a sense of life in that area not too far away from where the story’s settlement was located. Although my ancestors eventually prospered there, The Land Breakers is largely a story about loss, determination in the face of hardship and tragedy and the relationship of the settlers to the land.
“ One could not understand the family, without knowing about this land, and their work on it, and plans for it, and one could not know the land with any real understanding without knowing this family of people. They were dusty with the land; the grid of the land was in them. Their work, which was done together, was the chief meaning of their family lives.“
When Mooney observes that Imy was up before dawn every day, he muses, “ How she knew he didn’t know, but always, as she got the fire blazing well, dawn began to appear upriver, as if she were the one who had awakened it. But it was not her doing, he knew. The dawn was constant; it was an old thing and had come on its own. Not even the will and whispers of the mountain could change it. The truth was not that Imy called it, but that she had lived so close to the order of life that she heard it called.”
The first tragic loss is the death of Imy, which is foretold in the first Chapter. “ She had helped him too much. A woman wasn’t made to do clearing. She had helped cut trees and pull brush and burn off. Maybe that was it, but in the brush smoke had been the pained spirit of his place, and it had got inside her, and was expanding outward, smoldering, stifling her. It was stealing her away from him at the start of their work and adventure. He was losing her, the body and presence and affection of her, and there was no one else in the place, or in his life.”
Her death is sorrowfully mourned, but it is only the first loss. The mountain throws at the settlers bears, wolves, panthers, snakes, weather, loneliness, longing, maladies and accidents, and of course conflicts between people as the settlement grew. Mooney’s dog was slit open by a bear.
“The ground was so cold, they could not bury it deep, but they did as best they could. They put the dog near Imy’s grave, and marked the place with the rock. The dog had not been a brave one; the noises and threats of the wilderness had frightened it from the start, but it had been friendly, and had given warning to them countless times. It would be more difficult to get along in this wild country without the dog to scent and hear and see for them.”
The losses mount throughout the novel, including human and economic loss, but there is also their determination to persevere in spite of the losses. The author’s storytelling compels the reader to keep on. The novel ends on a somewhat hopeful note as the mountain community becomes more populous and new families are started.
“He looked up at the dark mountain. Another small house and family will be set against it, he thought, close to the wildness of it, the merciless, the pitiless mind of it, there in the shadow of it.“
This was a five star read for me, and even without reference to my family history, it would be that kind of book, because it tells a larger story of what it took to tame this country that became the United States.
November 16, 2014
I'm puzzled at the positive reviews...let me give you a sample of the writing.
Page one : "They had been apprenticed out at eleven years of age to a family named Martingale, which had six children of its own but which had a lot of land to tend and a mill, which took much work."
Which which which...
Chapter two :
"Off in Virginia he had a plantation, not as good as the best in the country, but one rich enough. It was not the best, however, and he could not command the sort of respect he wanted in a place where other men had a right to as much respect as he, so he made plans to leave there even before he knew in any clear thought that he would leave."
Any clear thought? Sorry. You don't OWN a clear thought!
I picked this up at Salvation Army for a buck. Looked on GR and congratulated myself that Id found a winner. The story starts in 1799 and is about the first white settlers in North Carolina. Yay!!!
What. A. Disappointment.
And for those of you who care, the book is not clean either. Its not so much "how to settle the hills " as "who can I bed in the hills when there's no one here... but look who's coming! a neighboring farmer with nine daughters "....gee, that ought to keep him busy a few years.
Bottom line : Don't waste your time.
Page one : "They had been apprenticed out at eleven years of age to a family named Martingale, which had six children of its own but which had a lot of land to tend and a mill, which took much work."
Which which which...
Chapter two :
"Off in Virginia he had a plantation, not as good as the best in the country, but one rich enough. It was not the best, however, and he could not command the sort of respect he wanted in a place where other men had a right to as much respect as he, so he made plans to leave there even before he knew in any clear thought that he would leave."
Any clear thought? Sorry. You don't OWN a clear thought!
I picked this up at Salvation Army for a buck. Looked on GR and congratulated myself that Id found a winner. The story starts in 1799 and is about the first white settlers in North Carolina. Yay!!!
What. A. Disappointment.
And for those of you who care, the book is not clean either. Its not so much "how to settle the hills " as "who can I bed in the hills when there's no one here... but look who's coming! a neighboring farmer with nine daughters "....gee, that ought to keep him busy a few years.
Bottom line : Don't waste your time.
October 25, 2016
A people of perseverance. I don't think you could find a book with harder working individuals. This is a great account of the founding of a settlement in the southern mountains. The writing is perfect and the story is fascinating. It makes you think about all the obstacles these "land breakers" endured and survived.
Favorite quote that sums up the book for me, "It was not that the family was making a machine that they could use; the family was the machine. The family and the clearing and the crops and the stock and the tools were part of the same thing. The family and the place were the same thing and could not be separated one from the other."
Favorite quote that sums up the book for me, "It was not that the family was making a machine that they could use; the family was the machine. The family and the clearing and the crops and the stock and the tools were part of the same thing. The family and the place were the same thing and could not be separated one from the other."
Read
February 16, 2025A total snooze fest packed with underdeveloped characters. Slow as fucking slow can be. Completely baffled by all the five star reviews. It just took me two hours now to read from page 277 to page 281 (of 344). I can pinpoint a few good things about it (the dialogue, for example) but the truth is I really can’t stand the bloody thing. I’m done.
June 2, 2022
― There’s no prettier sight, he thought, and no prettier place than this one. It traps a man into staying, into building here; then it shows him that he doesn’t even possess his own cabin and fields. The valley is its own, he knew now. The valley and the beasts and the mountain and the snows and the water and the cliffs owned themselves yet. If he left here, in a few years there would be little sign that he had even come.
― John Ehle, The Land Breakers
Born in Asheville NC, author John Ehle (pronounced EE-lee) has been called the father of Appalachian literature. None other than Harper Lee called Ehle “the foremost writer of historical fiction.” His works of fiction were always based in the mountains of North Carolina, with which he was so familiar. First published in 1964, The Land Breakers is the first of seven novels Ehle wrote about the beautiful mountains of western North Carolina. Fortunately, the novel was reprinted in 2014.
The Land Breakers tells the story of early settlers who came to the virgin forests of these mountains in 1779—settlers who tried to create a life from the land, albeit a primitive existence. It is a story of life and death, of hard work and sacrifice, and of the first halting steps in creating community on the American frontier. The novel tells the story of Mooney and Imy Wright, former indentured servants who venture west to an uninhabited piece of land in the Appalachian Mountains. Starting from scratch with a few crude tools, they mean to forge a life in this cruel land of matchless beauty. A giant of a man unafraid of hard labor, Mooney wants to build a life here despite the sacrifices required of him. There are no roads; no electricity; no plumbing. They’re met with blizzards, bears, wolves, and snakes. They must grow or make everything for themselves, from bread, to soap and clothing. It is arduous work made all the worse by frequent encounters with dangerous creatures.
Soon, others join them: Tinkler Harrison, a wealthy but hard man who no one seems to like; Harrison’s extended family, including his daughter Lorry and beautiful niece Mina; a group of German immigrants; and a young newlywed couple moving from Cumberland. When Imy dies, Mooney buries her in the unforgiving land. Alone now, Mooney must find a new wife.
― It’s not the woman that’s noticed; it’s the emptiness when the woman ain’t there, like as if a man needed his tongue and found it cut out of his mouth.
― John Ehle, The Land Breakers
The Land Breakers is a great American novel, a fascinating story of the courage and hard work that forged this infant nation. It is one of the best books I’ve read about our pioneer past. It is reminiscent of the works of John Steinbeck, Wendell Berry, and Willa Cather—full of life and wisdom. The story is memorable and the characters believable and unforgettable. It is a graphic and powerful portrayal of the struggle of pioneering life, both its joys and tragedies. Ehle’s prose is marvelously suited to his subject and setting. He has an ear for dialogue that reflects how people talk in the North Carolina mountains. I should know—my wife and I live in the mountains near where this story takes place. We live in a log home in a fairly remote corner of Buncombe County. While we have some modern conveniences, it’s not hard to imagine the struggles that these first pioneers experienced. Black bears and snakes are not uncommon sights. We can drive at least twelve miles in any direction before we encounter the first traffic light. We live up a gravel road on the side of a mountain; there are no streetlights for many miles, and the nights can be as black as pitch. Hard work is part and parcel of living here. Yet we love the peace and quiet here, as well as the natural beauty of the area. The Land Breakers is fine storytelling; one doesn’t have to live in these mountains to enjoy this wonderful novel.
― John Ehle, The Land Breakers
Born in Asheville NC, author John Ehle (pronounced EE-lee) has been called the father of Appalachian literature. None other than Harper Lee called Ehle “the foremost writer of historical fiction.” His works of fiction were always based in the mountains of North Carolina, with which he was so familiar. First published in 1964, The Land Breakers is the first of seven novels Ehle wrote about the beautiful mountains of western North Carolina. Fortunately, the novel was reprinted in 2014.
The Land Breakers tells the story of early settlers who came to the virgin forests of these mountains in 1779—settlers who tried to create a life from the land, albeit a primitive existence. It is a story of life and death, of hard work and sacrifice, and of the first halting steps in creating community on the American frontier. The novel tells the story of Mooney and Imy Wright, former indentured servants who venture west to an uninhabited piece of land in the Appalachian Mountains. Starting from scratch with a few crude tools, they mean to forge a life in this cruel land of matchless beauty. A giant of a man unafraid of hard labor, Mooney wants to build a life here despite the sacrifices required of him. There are no roads; no electricity; no plumbing. They’re met with blizzards, bears, wolves, and snakes. They must grow or make everything for themselves, from bread, to soap and clothing. It is arduous work made all the worse by frequent encounters with dangerous creatures.
Soon, others join them: Tinkler Harrison, a wealthy but hard man who no one seems to like; Harrison’s extended family, including his daughter Lorry and beautiful niece Mina; a group of German immigrants; and a young newlywed couple moving from Cumberland. When Imy dies, Mooney buries her in the unforgiving land. Alone now, Mooney must find a new wife.
― It’s not the woman that’s noticed; it’s the emptiness when the woman ain’t there, like as if a man needed his tongue and found it cut out of his mouth.
― John Ehle, The Land Breakers
The Land Breakers is a great American novel, a fascinating story of the courage and hard work that forged this infant nation. It is one of the best books I’ve read about our pioneer past. It is reminiscent of the works of John Steinbeck, Wendell Berry, and Willa Cather—full of life and wisdom. The story is memorable and the characters believable and unforgettable. It is a graphic and powerful portrayal of the struggle of pioneering life, both its joys and tragedies. Ehle’s prose is marvelously suited to his subject and setting. He has an ear for dialogue that reflects how people talk in the North Carolina mountains. I should know—my wife and I live in the mountains near where this story takes place. We live in a log home in a fairly remote corner of Buncombe County. While we have some modern conveniences, it’s not hard to imagine the struggles that these first pioneers experienced. Black bears and snakes are not uncommon sights. We can drive at least twelve miles in any direction before we encounter the first traffic light. We live up a gravel road on the side of a mountain; there are no streetlights for many miles, and the nights can be as black as pitch. Hard work is part and parcel of living here. Yet we love the peace and quiet here, as well as the natural beauty of the area. The Land Breakers is fine storytelling; one doesn’t have to live in these mountains to enjoy this wonderful novel.
December 13, 2021
"The Land Breakers is a saga like the Norse Sagas or the book of Genesis", says the blurb, and those are great comparisons. This book is the story of the settling of the Appalachian mountains by white farmers. There are bears and wolves that stalk around every tree. There's severe weather and harsh winters that threaten the character's lives; no one is ever safe. Which isn't to say this is simply a survival tale of man vs. nature. This is a story that's filled with humanity and complex relationships.
The writing is wonderful and fluid. At times it feels like a folktale, at other times it can feel dreamlike; sometimes it can get very technical in nature as it describes the practical tasks of building a log cabin from scratch or constructing a plowshare. But the writing is always pleasing to read and it pushes you right along.
This is my neck of the woods, or at least close to it. I'm a Kentucky boy and I often drive a couple hours east to be in the mountains. When you're there, it feels like you're in an old place, like the place that the world began. There are still a few bears left, but you can feel the weight of all the bears throughout history that have been driven out by generations of humans invading their territory. And this is the book that comes closest to describing that history that you feel when you take a walk in the woods of the mountains of the eastern United States.
The writing is wonderful and fluid. At times it feels like a folktale, at other times it can feel dreamlike; sometimes it can get very technical in nature as it describes the practical tasks of building a log cabin from scratch or constructing a plowshare. But the writing is always pleasing to read and it pushes you right along.
This is my neck of the woods, or at least close to it. I'm a Kentucky boy and I often drive a couple hours east to be in the mountains. When you're there, it feels like you're in an old place, like the place that the world began. There are still a few bears left, but you can feel the weight of all the bears throughout history that have been driven out by generations of humans invading their territory. And this is the book that comes closest to describing that history that you feel when you take a walk in the woods of the mountains of the eastern United States.
December 8, 2023
This one will stick in my memory a long time. A historical novel, first of a loose series set in the NC mountains, it covers the years 1779-1784 when the first white settlers are reaching the upper valleys of the high mountain land. The Cherokee are still fighting a bit to the west but they have already left these mountains and the Revolutionary War seems far away. A good thing, too, because making a home and surviving here is hard enough with the big trees to clear, dangers from the bears & wolves & snakes, and the changing weather.
There are some great characters . . . Mooney, a hardworking, strong man, comes to the mountains as a very young man with his wife, drawn to the mountains because it is the only land he can afford. Within a very few years, he learns how very difficult it will be to make a farm and yet the beauty of the land has claimed him,so that he can’t think about leaving.
Lorry, his second wife, is my favorite character, a strong, competent, sensible, kind woman.
The land gradually draws more settlers and they are not all hard working, good folk but gradually they learn to know and depend on each other as neighbors.
The details ring true about what life on the mountain frontier would have been like. No bread of any kind for months on end, not even corn pone. Making everything, shoes and saddles, keeping sheep for wool.
The dialect is natural, not heavy (at least not to someone from the rural upland South, on the edge of the Appalachians). But the storytelling voice, the 3rd person narrator voice is interesting — I am assuming it was written to reflect the straight forward spirit of the times and the characters.
Reading this 1964 novel immediately after the 2023 published North Woods is interesting, too — what a contrast in narrative styles and “outlook on nature”. There is appreciation of nature here but not the sense of loss that one senses in recent novels.
Another lasting impression from this book . . . Maybe I need to be more wary of snakes.
I look forward to reading more books in this series but may wait until I have a trip to the mountains coming up. Very glad to have found this author thanks to GoodReads.
There are some great characters . . . Mooney, a hardworking, strong man, comes to the mountains as a very young man with his wife, drawn to the mountains because it is the only land he can afford. Within a very few years, he learns how very difficult it will be to make a farm and yet the beauty of the land has claimed him,so that he can’t think about leaving.
Lorry, his second wife, is my favorite character, a strong, competent, sensible, kind woman.
The land gradually draws more settlers and they are not all hard working, good folk but gradually they learn to know and depend on each other as neighbors.
The details ring true about what life on the mountain frontier would have been like. No bread of any kind for months on end, not even corn pone. Making everything, shoes and saddles, keeping sheep for wool.
The dialect is natural, not heavy (at least not to someone from the rural upland South, on the edge of the Appalachians). But the storytelling voice, the 3rd person narrator voice is interesting — I am assuming it was written to reflect the straight forward spirit of the times and the characters.
Reading this 1964 novel immediately after the 2023 published North Woods is interesting, too — what a contrast in narrative styles and “outlook on nature”. There is appreciation of nature here but not the sense of loss that one senses in recent novels.
Another lasting impression from this book . . . Maybe I need to be more wary of snakes.
I look forward to reading more books in this series but may wait until I have a trip to the mountains coming up. Very glad to have found this author thanks to GoodReads.
March 7, 2015
Up to the moment I opened to the first of this book, I was a stranger to John Ehle. Where have I been? Not only have I just completed reading a fantastic novel, but I have found that there is more of the story waiting for me to discover. This is book #1 in the so-called "Mountain Novels". I am anxious to begin the next in the series, "The Road".
This is a tale of how the mountains of North Carolina came to be settled. It's the story of a young couple who finally, after a few years of wandering, come to a valley in the mountains. The year is 1779. They are first to settle in this remote location. Others soon follow, but not all is pastoral and nature is not kind at times. The first year, Mooney Wright, 21, loses his young wife. During his grieving, he questions his willingness to continue his efforts to carve out a life in such a hostile place. Another family arrives, one with all daughters. He begins to have feelings for the oldest, the innocent 16-year-old, Pearlamina.
Mina is the Eve-like symbol. Here in this seeming paradise, Mooney must make a choice for there is another woman he also had seen move into the valley.
You'll have to read the book to follow that plot line.
But, in the end, the book is about dreams and new beginnings. It is also about survival, where an indifferent god of nature can strike down anyone without reason or warning.
One could compare this novel to a typical pioneer story of the west. The only difference is that in 1779, the frontier was the Appalachian Mountains. From these early settlers, we have the history of the stereotypical "mountain men", fiddling the old Scots-Irish tunes we can still hear today.
This is a tale of how the mountains of North Carolina came to be settled. It's the story of a young couple who finally, after a few years of wandering, come to a valley in the mountains. The year is 1779. They are first to settle in this remote location. Others soon follow, but not all is pastoral and nature is not kind at times. The first year, Mooney Wright, 21, loses his young wife. During his grieving, he questions his willingness to continue his efforts to carve out a life in such a hostile place. Another family arrives, one with all daughters. He begins to have feelings for the oldest, the innocent 16-year-old, Pearlamina.
Mina is the Eve-like symbol. Here in this seeming paradise, Mooney must make a choice for there is another woman he also had seen move into the valley.
You'll have to read the book to follow that plot line.
But, in the end, the book is about dreams and new beginnings. It is also about survival, where an indifferent god of nature can strike down anyone without reason or warning.
One could compare this novel to a typical pioneer story of the west. The only difference is that in 1779, the frontier was the Appalachian Mountains. From these early settlers, we have the history of the stereotypical "mountain men", fiddling the old Scots-Irish tunes we can still hear today.
June 11, 2021
John Ehle’s The Land Breakers almost invites mockery and satire. Set in the late eighteenth century mountain frontier of North Carolina, bears play a central role in the plot. Ehle’s novel is populated with an ever growing number of settlers, but he portrays only a few with convincing details. The Land Breakers, with its probably purposively simple prose and its focus on mostly illiterate characters, their livestock, and those omnipresent bears, proved challenging to me. But strangely, Ehle manages to construct a compelling tale here.
3.5 stars
3.5 stars
July 15, 2018
Very nice. Ehle’s simple writing flows perfectly with this gradual tale of late 18th century settlement in the Appalachian wilderness. A story about overcoming hardship; of defeating your failures and moving forward. It’s a novel about endlessly pursuing your dreams, and it’s a very pleasant read.
December 13, 2025
This book gave the honest and real picture of life starting out in the Appalachian mountains. I wasn’t sure what I thought of it at first- it didn’t leave much out of its portrayal of real life. But it’s difficult to not be drawn into the triumphs and struggles of these settlers and the hard work they put into living in the unforgiving yet beautiful mountains.
June 17, 2019
What a great story with such vivid characters, this book has adventure,love, disappointment, murder, craziness, an ego maniac, bigamy, great heroism, terror, love, so much love, clear descriptions and top notch research. Highly recommend.
August 10, 2025
The Land Breakers is a 1964 novel by North Carolinian John Ehle about the settling of the North Carolina Appalachian wilderness between the years of 1779 and 1784. The protagonist of the story is Mooney Wright, an Irish immigrant who is the first to come to settle into a valley area somewhere outside the current day towns of Morganton and Boone in North Carolina. Eventually others come to settle. The story examines all these characters and their struggles to create a village home in this mountainous valley.
I totally agree with the back-cover blurb sentiment of author Michael Ondaatje that “The Land Breakers is a great American novel.” It should certainly be in the top 10 of any candidate list of THE Great American Novel.
Why this is a Great American Novel and why I loved it:
THE THEME: Thoroughly American. Like The Awakening Land, and The Way West trilogies I loved, this is the very American story of the courageous, virtuous yet flawed people who settled the vast wilderness areas of the late 18th and 19th Century. These settlers faced natural and human obstacles in order to obtain personal fulfillment while also helping this nation grow into the world wide force it was to become in the 20th Century.
THE WRITING: Brilliantly descriptive. Ehle has the ability to pick not just adjectives, but the right noun to evoke the beauty and danger of the setting and living arrangements. But it’s not just the setting that he describes so well, but the activities too. Ehle enables the reader to visualize and feel what it is like to wield that axe and cut through that wood.
THE CHARACTERS: Various and vivid. To address his theme, Ehle creates characters that enable him to examine the traits necessary to persevere and succeed, and the interpersonal relations between those with and those without some of those traits. In addition to Mooney, Ehle creates other pioneer men of various dispositions and traits that help and hinder Mooney in his goal of creating a successful settlement in the valley.
But Ehle also creates two wonderful female characters in Lorry, the 30ish mother of two sons, and Mina, the spunky, witty, very attractive and very able teenager. These two women and Mooney provide the reader with three characters to identify with and root for. Ehle even brings in another male character to create a sort of romantic quadrangle with Mooney, Lorry and Mina. All these relationships are deftly handled and never melodramatic. The characters are aware there is too much at stake for there to be too much emotional melodrama.
THE STORYTELLING: Exciting yet mundane. Ehle is adept at slowly building the story events to provide a nice level of suspense before the climactic events. While there are tragic events, as one expects in a wilderness setting, they don’t prevent the day-to-day living events and pioneer positivity to shine through. A well-crafted story.
OVERALL: Very American Themes + Beautiful Descriptive Writing +Vivid Varietal Characters with Strong Character Arcs + Well-Crafted and Dramatic Storyline = A Great American Novel & My first 5 star novel of the year
I totally agree with the back-cover blurb sentiment of author Michael Ondaatje that “The Land Breakers is a great American novel.” It should certainly be in the top 10 of any candidate list of THE Great American Novel.
Why this is a Great American Novel and why I loved it:
THE THEME: Thoroughly American. Like The Awakening Land, and The Way West trilogies I loved, this is the very American story of the courageous, virtuous yet flawed people who settled the vast wilderness areas of the late 18th and 19th Century. These settlers faced natural and human obstacles in order to obtain personal fulfillment while also helping this nation grow into the world wide force it was to become in the 20th Century.
THE WRITING: Brilliantly descriptive. Ehle has the ability to pick not just adjectives, but the right noun to evoke the beauty and danger of the setting and living arrangements. But it’s not just the setting that he describes so well, but the activities too. Ehle enables the reader to visualize and feel what it is like to wield that axe and cut through that wood.
THE CHARACTERS: Various and vivid. To address his theme, Ehle creates characters that enable him to examine the traits necessary to persevere and succeed, and the interpersonal relations between those with and those without some of those traits. In addition to Mooney, Ehle creates other pioneer men of various dispositions and traits that help and hinder Mooney in his goal of creating a successful settlement in the valley.
But Ehle also creates two wonderful female characters in Lorry, the 30ish mother of two sons, and Mina, the spunky, witty, very attractive and very able teenager. These two women and Mooney provide the reader with three characters to identify with and root for. Ehle even brings in another male character to create a sort of romantic quadrangle with Mooney, Lorry and Mina. All these relationships are deftly handled and never melodramatic. The characters are aware there is too much at stake for there to be too much emotional melodrama.
THE STORYTELLING: Exciting yet mundane. Ehle is adept at slowly building the story events to provide a nice level of suspense before the climactic events. While there are tragic events, as one expects in a wilderness setting, they don’t prevent the day-to-day living events and pioneer positivity to shine through. A well-crafted story.
OVERALL: Very American Themes + Beautiful Descriptive Writing +Vivid Varietal Characters with Strong Character Arcs + Well-Crafted and Dramatic Storyline = A Great American Novel & My first 5 star novel of the year
June 10, 2015
I think books like this tickle a spot that nowadays post-apocalypse and zombies tickles - the kind of books that let you imagine your own life in a "new" spot, one without any society to speak of, free to do what you want to do, with a chance to "prove yourself" (a hunt for self-reliance?).
The Land Breakers is the story of a new, small, faraway American settlement in the mountains of the 1780s. Over a few years the reader follows the new settlers in the harsh conditions, as they try and make a living off the new land. All of them are trying to start a new life, but the harsh conditions take and take and rarely give. Bears, panthers, snakes and diseases attack the settlers and take their stock, yet the settlers carry on.
The narrator's language is direct, reminding me of Blood Meridian or Butcher's Crossing, often echoing the language of the book's inhabitants:
Besides all the harshness, there's a peculiar brand of American optimism here - the kind that says "I need to start something new" and "there is no place for me in the old and established" (again: something which, to me, is nowadays found in post-apoc fiction). It makes for great reading.
The Land Breakers is the story of a new, small, faraway American settlement in the mountains of the 1780s. Over a few years the reader follows the new settlers in the harsh conditions, as they try and make a living off the new land. All of them are trying to start a new life, but the harsh conditions take and take and rarely give. Bears, panthers, snakes and diseases attack the settlers and take their stock, yet the settlers carry on.
The narrator's language is direct, reminding me of Blood Meridian or Butcher's Crossing, often echoing the language of the book's inhabitants:
“There are no birds here,” she said.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “the birds are here.”
“I locked that door when I come in, and the smoke keeps birds out of the chimney.”
“I feel their wings. Listen to them fly?”
She listened. “I hear the fire, that’s all.”
“Oh, no,” he said, knowing he would die.
Besides all the harshness, there's a peculiar brand of American optimism here - the kind that says "I need to start something new" and "there is no place for me in the old and established" (again: something which, to me, is nowadays found in post-apoc fiction). It makes for great reading.
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