The Scapegoat

Beulah Quintet #4

by Mary Lee Settle

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

In a novel about casual and heedless acts that often lead to unthinkable results, Mary Lee Settle traces the fall of a West Virginia town that was first made rich by coal, then corrupted and destroyed by it. Set in 1912, The Scapegoat propels the readers with astonishing immediacy to a fateful day in a coal miners' strike when distant relatives of Beulah dynasty, only dimly aware of their blood ties, face off in a dispute that escalates in the slaughter of an innocent man. Emotions escalate to a frenzy of violence as Mother Jones, leader of the striking miners, calls for action in a community devastated by Southern resignation and by guilt associated with selling out to Eastern investors.

Genres: Historical Fiction

278 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 1980

About the author

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

Reviews

[Lemma · Rating 4 out of 5]

He moved beyond the quiet creek into the dark depths of swamplands where the ferns, the maidenhair, were eighty feet high and the wild rain-laden leaves were platters of damp and if there was sun it never touched the swamp through the hot blindness of the mist. Deep, deep fallow falling slowly burning through an eon, it was gone and Mr. Roundtree was in an ocean as perpetual, an inland-sea sand floor taking a million years to cover the swamp under it. He saw a rhythm so slow of sea and sand, sea creatures, slow pulse of change to swamp and ferns and mist and then the systolic sea, and then the diastolic swamp, continuously overlaying. He saw the inexorable pressure of pulse and change, the mountains forced upward and, for the time being, saw himself within an eon, taking the future as much for granted as did the sea creatures, the swamp worms. The patient water, the greatest of all forces, moved again in Lacey Creek below his feet, gently, gently caressing the water weeds that flower like streaming hair.
He, Sir Neville St. Michael Roundtree, stood thinking he was using his intelligence to dig out the coal formed by the hot swamps. Once in a while there was a clue, the bole of a great tree that made a dangerous petrified plug that could fall out of a mine roof and kill a man. From time to time a perfect form of a fern frond kept its grace forever pressed by the coal as girls pressed flowers in books. Mr. Roundtree paid a quarter to any man who would bring him the fossils of worms, of leaves, of clamshells from the sandstone of the sea ceiling they worked under. Productus cora, Spirifer bonensis, lingula- Mr. Roundtree had been to grammar school and was proud of his Latin.

Ostensibly part of a quintet, this novel stands alone, and is a perfectly fine entry point into Settle's world. It's a mature, nuanced, extremely competent story of a mining town in crisis set over a period of a few days, from many perspectives; from page one the essential tensions are established, soon joined by all manner of pleasing ironies and specifics. "Blown Away" would be an overstatement, but I found myself thinking and talking about this one quite a lot, and would not hesitate to recommend Settle to anyone hunting for underrated American novelists.

[Jim Grimsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably the best of the Beulah Quintet in terms of unity and approach, telling the story of one of the heirs to Beulah who grew rich on coal, a quiet and ineffectual man who married sensibly, managed his coal mine with some humanity, but lost himself to the larger coal interests who entered West Virginia during the era of the robber baron capitalists. Mother Jones features in the book, a legendary figure among community organizers. The incident at the center of the book, a mine strike that the coal bosses must crush, is offered in counterpoint with the more private side of the book - deft, exact portraits of the women who are the central characters, much richer and more tangible than the men. Settle has a fine eye on these people and their nuances of attitude and voice are clear as they can be. This is a period of history and a place that I have read little about, and the novel on the whole is satisfying. But I found myself standing outside the story and carping at it nevertheless. The novel constantly pushed me out of immersion by constant shifts in point of view; I am to follow everyone's story equally, it seems, even though not all the loci of character are equally interesting. The technique here is something between Faulkner and Woolf. It is not the method of the novel that falters for me; it is the fact that the method really exposes the triviality of the people at the center of the story. Settle is not as successful as Woolf at making the objects of everyday appear luminous and singular. And the fact that we move so readily from head to head in the story made me critique each character again and again as though I were being introduced to them over and over again. The story never could build up much momentum. The novel survives its weaknesses, though, and resonates with the pathos of these people and their struggle. The fine writing carries it.

[Marguerite Hargreaves · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another blast from the past, from a reading journal I kept from 1980-2008.

This historical novel is set in West Virginia during a 24-hour period in June 1912. It involves three fictional families and the real-life character of Mother Jones, a radical labor organizer and friend to workers. Jones was in the state for the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek mining strike, something I’d not heard of when I read this in 1981.

The point of view shifts among characters without ever reflecting the view of the mine owner and management. My take admired author Mary Lee Settle’s way with words and dialect. This is the first book in the Beulah Quintet. (Didn’t read the other books).

[Vel Veeter]

This is the fourth book in the Beaulah Quinet, Mary Lee Settle’s history of West Virginia through the lens of conflicts ranging from the ousting of a Puritan partisan in the English Civil War (leading to immigration to America) to the settling and drawing of land parcels in the 18th century to a novel I haven’t read yet in the 1840s to this coal mining dispute in 1912 and finally to more or less contemporary times. Following one family, in the loosest terms, but one parcel of land, the novels in various orders tell the history of the land in mostly contemporary and authentic language.

So this is the fourth one and I haven’t read the one prior to it, but that’s because I owned this one, and it was shorter, so I start back int he quintet here. Having read the first two book already, I think I am in a mood to finish all five this year. This was the best one to read thus far and the most enjoyable of them as well. I have a real fascination with labor disputes in the early 20th century because as fraught as they were, they make me feel like there’s still a kind of hope to win back rights slowly drizzled away from the last decades. I have that more modern sense of really supporting labor rights but being really scared of losing what little I have by taking those risks.

This novel focuses on a family squabble that bleeds into the labor dispute between the Lacey and Catlett families and a group of Italian immigrant coal. Drawing on the fears of the Other, the firebranding of Mother Jones, and familiar stories like these, the novel retells a violent but not deadly clash over the course of a weekend in 1912. Told in short first person bursts in a few section by the Catlett’s youngest daughter watching the events unfold and then in third person omniscient sections for the rest, the effect is a kind of back and forth in language and theme. If you haven’t already, you should check out the movie Matewan, which tells a similar set of events.

[Kallie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story really takes off when Settle focuses on the Italian family and Mother Jones. Before that we are with the clueless elite about whom Settle has a LOT of insight. They are an important part of the story but their lameness drags down the narrative.