The Killing Ground

Beulah Quintet #5

by Mary Lee Settle

An unforgettable generational saga about the roots of American culture,class, identity, and the meaning of freedom

The Killing Ground begins in 1978 with the return of Hannah McKarkle to her hometown of Canona, West Virginia, where she sets out to remove the shroud of mystery that has surrounded her brother's murder for more than two decades. In her quest Hannah pieces together a collective history of Canona, peels away the facades that mask the town's "best people," and becomes acquainted with the community's unpretentious citizenry. Her search for truth reveals a heritage that extends back to Johnny Church of Prisons, bringing the story of The Beulah Quintet full circle and yielding a tale told with moving conviction.

Genres: Historical Fiction

404 pages, Paperback

First published February 14, 1983

About the author

Graduate of Sweet Briar College. Winner of the National Book Award in 1978 for Blood Tie.

Reviews

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the final book in Settle's Quintet about Beulah, a fictional place based loosely on the area in West Virginia in which the author and I both grew up, although decades apart.

I wanted to love these books, but I couldn't. Settle writes in a very disjointed manner, going from story to story, time to time, all on the same page, and without any sort of transitions. Meaning, for example, her characters are talking then she interjects memories of their past right in the middle of their conversation. It happened incessantly enough, and through all five of these books, that I realized it's her writing style. I found myself re-reading page after page, trying to figure out what in the world had happened to the plot.

As noted in reviews for the other books in this series, she writes for the time period - but it is very jarring to read the frequent use of the "n" word. Very off-putting for today's reader.

I started to rate this a two, but I do like how she tied up the quintet in the end. It helped make this frustrating journey marginally worth the struggle.

[John Tipper · Rating 3 out of 5]

The final novel in the Beulah Quintet, set mostly in the 1960s-70s. Hannah McKarkle mourns the life of her brother Johnny, killed in 1960. The book has an usual narrative structure: Hannah is in the first person at times, then in the third. She's the main character. Some minor characters, like Maria, Kitty Puss, Anne Randolph, and Daisy have the first person perspective, starting out, but later don't. And there's a meta fiction element to the novel, in that Hannah, a writer, comes to Canona, WV, to give a talk about her novels. She discusses the Beulah Quintet. Thus she's a character talking on the books she's working on. It's basically a parable of a dysfunctional family. Preston, the father, is a coal baron and lawyer, while the mother is a disturbed high society woman. Melinda is an older, bossy sister. Johnny an older brother, who's a drunk, womanizer, and a rebel. Hannah is they young artistic daughter. Hannah leaves her New York City apartment to return to WV to find out how Johnny dies. The themes are a privileged class, identity, loss, and how the past impacts the present. I had a few issues with the plot, finding myself confused here and there. And wondering why Settle was so wordy.

[John Williams · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book a dreadful bore.

[Vel Veeter]

So this is the fifth novel of a series of five novels that tell the story of a tract of land in West Virginia starting at the very germ of the idea of settling in the New World during the English Revolution, through the naming and taming of the land in the 18th century, to the decades prior to the Civil War, to the Coal and labor rebellions of the early 20th century, and now to the late 1970s and early 1980s.

These novels were not written in order and need not be read in order (I still have read the 3rd novel, which was written second) this final section, like the others stands in for a broader chunk of history as a whole, but is still contained within relatively small scopes of time. Here, we have the writer Hannah (standing in very clearly for Mary Lee Settle) author of the other novels of the Beaulah Quintet coming home to finish her fourth volume, while we watch the events of the fifth take place. Hannah is returning to her small town in West Virginia decades after the death of her brother Johnny, who died young but as someone tells her “had a lot of mileage on him.” We see her as a 60 year old woman who has had the adventures of her life, and is maybe not trying to settle down per se, but is down with the main thrust. And thus is the rest of her town.

The novel then jumps back to the days surrounding her brother’s death and then forward again to the interregnum.

This is novel reminds me a lot of “Sophie’s Choice” which if you haven’t read (even if you’re seen the movie) I suggest you go out and get today and start reading. This novel plays upon the concept of authorship, the degrees to which an individual author and character are responsible for the creation of a novel, and that story can grown beyond the scope originally intended.

[Jackie Law · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The sunrises... Morning obliterates the past. It drags me back into the confined circle of my oen life" (8).

"At once I am 11... then 17 ... then 48 still asking one single timeless question: Where's my brother Johnny?" (12).

"She buried an obsession so it would not haunt her" (13).

"We Southern women only do things for two reasons, because we are in love and because we're not" (191).


"...if we come full circle, perhaps a place to leave without guilt and return without regret, and there the seeking ends" (365).

[Diane Dressler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this series of five books, The Beulah Quintet, many years ago and have lost almost all memory of them except for how completely drawn in I was into the history of this family. Will read them again.

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I could have done without the first part of this book, and almost quit reading. I'm glad I didn't because Part Two and the Epilogue were worth it. They seemed like the real story.

[Noreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good illustration on how to castrate your son, southern style.