Know Nothing

Beulah Quintet #3

by Mary Lee Settle

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

Set in the decades preceding the Civil War, Know Nothing tells the tragic tale of Peregrine Catlett and his second son, Johnny. The year 1837 brings a host of perils to their verdant West Virginia valley. Amid financial panic, debate over the abolition of slavery, and mounting tension between North and South, Peregrine considers freeing his slaves but believes that, with his children scattered, his only hope of retaining his plantation rests on the use of slave labor.

Johnny returns to this father's farm but stays only until the outbreak of hostilities. He soon loses sight of his reasons for joining the Confederate forces and ends up fighting both family and friends with disastrous results.

Genres: Historical Fiction

334 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

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

Reviews

[Jim Grimsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I took up this book after having attempted to read it once and failing. I have much respect for Mary Lee Settle but, at times, I have very little liking for her work. (And at times I have a very great liking for it, as well, but that is for another day.) As she states in the introductions to most of the Beulah Quintet, it is her purpose to submerge herself in history and to become a creature of the era of which she writes. In the case of Know Nothing, this means inhabiting the mind of slave holders, poor settlers, and sometimes, at least in passing, of enslaved people. While it is impossible to write of this era of history without using the n-word, which is now among the most taboo of all words, the way in which an author conducts herself in the employment of the term and the inhuman purpose that lay behind its application is important. In the case of this novel, the shape of the minds of the white people feels true and harsh to the point that it is almost impossible to read passages of the book. She both represents the holding of people as slaves as a necessity and as a curse but her focus is on the slave owners and those who supported them. The presence of the slaves is almost incidental to the novel. Black people are only seen in their relations to the white people around them and not as people in themselves. This becomes an overwhelming concern when reading this book in 2021. We are still writing and rewriting this history and battling over its implications and consequences to this day. So that the novel itself feels incomplete and unsettled in its approach to the core of the story. The story she is telling is overshadowed and feels almost trivial. The struggle to tell the story becomes the foreground of the novel.

[Kallie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has some very powerful scenes, particularly those that involve 'poor relations' whose self-assertion makes their conflicts within the story bar far the most interesting. Settle never romanticizes or oversimplifies. She respects history, reality, and the reader too much to do that.

[Susan Beecher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written novel placed prior to the Civil War in Virginia. Ms. Settle is an amazing writer.