Janisse Ray is one of my favorite nonfiction/nature authors. But even so, I hesitated about reading this book, her first fictional work. It is very closely based on a true story and a difficult one to read about.
In the 1940s, 8 young children, ranging in ages from a year to 11 years old, were taken by their mother and grandfather up to a nearby mountain shack and semi-abandoned for 3 years. At first the mother would return weekly with food but as time went on her visits got more infrequent and she grew very abusive to the children, particularly to the daughter whose looks reminded her of the husband who had left her. Ruby, it seems, was in an ongoing affair with the county sheriff and didn't want the children and neither did the grandparents. The story is outlined in the preface with Janisse Ray talking about how it came to written so no spoilers here.
It is both a story of the children's survival (cooking hominy on an open fire, gathering firewood, finding ramps, poke sallet, berries, apples, etc.) and their struggles with guilt and shame over not being wanted and what happened during those three years. As adults, the siblings buried the memories of their time in the mountains and only as they were aging did they begin to talk about it among themselves and eventually want the story told. It isn't just a story of the failure of parents and family but also of community -- local people knew these children were alone on the mountain but the tradition of not interfering in "family business" was very strong then.
I finished this book several days ago but I am still thinking about it. I marvel, too, that the siblings all did survive and led productive lives, with families of their own, without turning to alcohol or abuse themselves.
It's not a long book and it is told in almost a documentary style, half way between fiction and recording of fact. I miss the lyrical quality of Janisse Ray's nature writing in this but it is an important story and I think she found the best way to share it through fiction.