Linney Stepp

by Diane Gilliam

Linney has long understood that her place in the family is to not make trouble, no matter the many ways in which her parents and sister fail to see her. When she is sixteen, Linney's father makes a deal with relatives to trade her for a boy cousin who will be more help with the farm work at their home in early 20 th -century eastern Kentucky. Once her father's plan is revealed, Linney resolves to decide for herself who she will be. Her story is one of what to do with betrayal, of learning to look inside her own self and to attend to deepest sources in order to make sense of the world and her singular place in it. Her time with the Chandler family shows her a different way for families to work, and she is especially guided by Aunt Hesty, the grandmother of the family. Aunt Hesty's own story connects with Linney's, and she opens to Linney other kinds of stories-fairy tales, myths-as maps for the difficult passage she wants and needs to make. As she learns to ask her questions out loud, and to answer yes or no or I don't know to the questions her life puts to her, Linney also maps for us-gives "a picture in my head," she would say- for what it looks like to live by the truth of the no harder work, no greater prize.

256 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2023

Reviews

[Tania Pryputniewicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Saddle Road Press sister, poet and writer Diane Gilliam, wrote a beautiful Appalachian fairytale novel called Linney Stepp (February 2023, Saddle Road Press). I’m still bathed in the book’s healing aura; how many stories do we read in which the female protagonist overcomes physically and psychologically annihilating threats to face down her deepest fears, learn to hear her inner voice, choose herself, and find a path to concrete forms of love? The setting is not only grounded in nature, but the dual hinterlands of sleep and waking dreamtime; Gilliam moves seamlessly between the three worlds from behind Linney’s eyes. The secret traumas of the ancestors motivate the gatekeeping decisions of the next generation; Linney finds herself inevitably forced to reckon with past and present in order to find herself and her true hearth.

[Rebecca Olander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diane Gilliam’s first novel (you may know her writing from her Perugia Press collection KETTLE BOTTOM, celebrating its 20th anniversary this year) was a lovely read. Gilliam has created another group of indelible characters in this book, beautifully tinged with place (Kentucky) and time (early 1900s), and stitched with myth and fairytales and heart. Quilting features in the story, and it caused me to take the well-worn quilt my grandmother made for me as a high school graduation present out of storage to admire it after many years and feel connected to the women in this story in an even deeper way.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes a novel pulls you in immediately by the strength of the voice, immerses you in a place and time you didn't know, and compels you to live that life with the characters. That's what LINNEY STEPP did for me. Gilliam's prose is both lyrical and down-to-earth. I loved the character of Linney, and I loved the book.