The Ordways

by William Humphrey

"To grow up a boy in Clarksville in my time, " recalls the narrator of The Ordways, "was to be a double dreamer." For Clarksville, Texas, was where the Old South met the frontier West and family history retold at the annual graveyard working day provided the stuff to fuel a young imagination. Here, then, is the story of Thomas Ordway, the narrator's great-grandfather, who was blinded at Shiloh and moved his family from Tennessee to Texas. Here, too, is the saga of his grandfather, Sam Ordway, who scoured the vast land of Texas in futile search of his three-year-old son, stolen by his neighbor in 1898. "Little Ned, " that lost, legendary uncle, grew up in the narrator's mind to be now a rancher, now a lonely wrangler, now a good-hearted rustler.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical

362 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

William Humphrey was an American novelist, memoirist, short story writer, and author of literary sporting and nature stories. His published works, while still available in French translation, largely have been out of print until recently. Home from the Hill and The Ordways are available from LSU Press. In 2015, Open Road Media published the complete works of William Humphrey in digital form.
Of significant interest to readers of Humphrey are Wakeful Anguish, A Literary Biography of William Humphrey by Ashby Bland Crowder as well as Far From Home, Selected Letters of William Humphrey edited by Crowder, both available from Louisiana State University Press.

Reviews

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic Texas novel--perfectly captures the uniqueness, the defining southern geography of East Texas. It's Faulkneresque, in the richness of detail and character--also the humor--but no more so than Elizabeth Spencer's Mississippi novels, written in the same era. In someone else's hands--I kept thinking Daniel Wallace!--its funny scenes (e.g. what do you do with a dead circus elephant?) could have veered of into magical realism. The ghosts of the Confederacy haunt this novel, which is not the only reason why it's a good read 50 years later.

[Richard Brear · Rating 5 out of 5]

When a reader wants to take a vacation without using any airline miles or scratching the tread off of vehicle tires, read The Ordways by William Humphrey. The Ordways is as clever, charming, and humorous in several parts as parts of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This regionalistic novel also manages to explore the depths, the "back forty," and the universally familiar sides of the human psyche. It's a literary sojourn, lke a work by Henry James with an amount of local flavor equivalent to that in Kate Chopin's fiction. And more, much more.

Maybe more than in the aftermath of any reading I've ever done, I feel as if I've just traveled back in time long enough and realistically enough to fathom and even empathize with those living then, while simultaneously appreciating how much human thinking in those by-gone years is still poignant and relevant today.

If you want evidence of what I say, I'll produce more criticism on The Ordways for you, but you might find some of the existing criticism on The Ordways and on Humphrey not only satisfactory but not too different from my "take" on this excellent novel.

[Amy Crow · Rating 5 out of 5]

A time capsule from early Texas with endearing characters.

[SusanwithaGoodBook · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book at a used book sale because it said it was about East Texas and was a “Texas classic,” but then I read the reviews and wasn’t so sure. So it’s taken me a few years to get around to reading it, but when I finally got started I couldn’t put it down. I found this surprisingly interesting, even though it’s neither a romance nor a mystery or even really much of a cohesive story. It’s more of a collection of stories - family lore, but I found it mostly really interesting and pretty funny in places.

Let me start with the synopsis. The way the book is described in the blurbs on Amazon and Good Reads really didn’t give me a good sense of what it was about, so let me try to do better.

This is the fictional memoir of an unnamed narrator who is from the small northeast Texas town of Clarksville (that’s between Texarkana and Paris if you’re looking on a map). The book was written in the 1960s and that seems to be the time that this fictional narrator is writing down his family memories. The narrator looks back to his childhood in the 1930s and then begins to tell about his family history beginning with his great-grandfather, Thomas Ordway, who was severely injured and blinded in the war at Shiloh in 1862. Thomas Ordway’s wife, through sheer strong will and determination, moved him and her family from Tennessee to Texas shortly after she picked him up from the army hospital. Together with their three children, they make a harrowing journey across Tennessee and Arkansas, barely making it across the border into Texas. At that point, they were almost done for, which explains why they stopped in Clarksville and went no farther.

Next, the narrator skips forward to the saga of his grandfather, Sam Ordway, son of Thomas, whose three-year-old son, Ned, is stolen by his neighbor in 1898. After realizing that his son is not going to be returned, Sam begins to search the vast lands of Texas in a futile search for his son. Finally returning to his home and wife empty-handed, Sam spends the rest of his life missing his son, Ned, and feeling guilt and passes that longing and pain on to our unnamed narrator, the son of one of Thomas' other twelve children.

I won’t give away the ending of this saga but suffice it to say that there’s a lot more to the story, and I found it all very interesting, plus you get to see Texas as it was over time - from the early, post-civil war days, through the 1930s and those times of expansion, to the 1960s as a more modern Texas began to emerge.

North East Texas takes center stage, but the vastness of Texas is explored through the eyes of this family. I’m very glad to have shared in their experiences through Humphrey’s wonderful writing.

NOTE: I think East Texans and most other native Texans will enjoy this (unless they hate history). Those from other states, probably won’t unless they’re particularly into history.

PS: This morning I heard my mother reading aloud a portion of this story to my father. The tale is so captivating that she just had to share it with him. I think that says a lot.

[Cindi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never so glad to finish a book

I chose this book because a reviewer mentioned it was a great way to learn about Texas which is something I've always wanted to do having been born there. I do not feel like I know anything more about Texas than I did when I started it. Because I read it with that prejudice, I did not truly appreciate the humor and psychology of family relationships that exists in this book. It took me a long time to read it because I kept waiting for something that would never happen. I still couldn't put it away though and while I couldn't wait to get it over with, I wanted to keep reading.

Mr. Humphrey's attention to detail is a little difficult at times and slows down the pace, but is beautifully written. You can see how conflicted I am. I may read it again someday if only to approach it from its proper vantage point which is a study of what we really mean when we're saying something completely opposite of our true feelings.

[Patti Ruff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Once I got through the first chapter, the story was good. Not sure why all the detail was given on the first Texas generation since it did not have any impact on the ending. Being from Northeast Texas, I enjoyed all the references to the small towns in that area and reading about Paris, TX at the turn of the 20th century. This book was okay.

[Connie S. Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Ordways

I cannot give this an honest review because I couldn't get past the first 100 pages. This was just not the book for me. I'm sure others found this a good read but for me it was not.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Faulkner is overrated! Humphrey is a master at evoking time and place. In this novel Texas circa 1898.

[Liz Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow to start, but when you get into it, you get into it. Good story, with a nice finish!

[Marti · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I'll be along directly."

Mention of "some place called Terry Hoat Indiana."

I do love a book with a table of contents.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the few collected essays worth reading in George Garrett's otherwise unexceptional Southern Excursions is his short review of The Ordways from 1966. I made a note at the

After reading it in the summer of 2021, I scrawled 'to read' in the margins. I then kept an eye out for it at all the various second hand bookstores that I regularly visit in my travels. Unfortunately I didn't find a copy of it. But I did come across it again, this time in another collection of essays. A far superior collection of essays called Reinventing the South by

That's where I first heard of it, and noted 'to read' in the margins of my book.

[Valerie]

It makes me want to read more of his work.

[Dmack · Rating 1 out of 5]

may be good but don't remember at all from college

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this because it was compared to Mark Twain and William Faulkner. Faulkner I see, Twain I do not. Still, it was an interesting story of early Texas.