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River of Earth
First published in 1940, James Still's masterful novel has become a classic. It is the story, seen through the eyes of a boy, of three years in the life of his family and their kin. He sees his parents pulled between the meager farm with its sense of independence and the mining camp with its uncertain promise of material prosperity. In his world privation, violence, and death are part of everyday life, accepted and endured. Yet it is a world of dignity, love, and humor, of natural beauty which Still evokes in sharp, poetic images. No writer has caught more effectively the vividness of mountain speech or shown more honestly the trials and joys of mountain life.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1940
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2373 people want to read
About the author
James Still
35 books42 followersFor the American playwright, see James Still.
James Still (July 16, 1906 – April 28, 2001) was an Appalachian poet, novelist and folklorist. He lived most of his life in a log house along the Dead Mare Branch of Little Carr Creek, Knott County, Kentucky. He was best known for the novel River of Earth, which depicted the struggles of coal mining in eastern Kentucky.
Still’s mother was sixteen when she moved to Alabama due to a tornado destroying the family home. His father was a horse doctor with no formal training. James Still was born July 16, 1906 near Lafayette, Chambers County, Alabama. Still was considered a quiet child but a hard worker. He along with his nine siblings worked the family farm. They farmed cotton, sugar cane, soybeans and corn. At the age of seven, Still began grade school. He found greater interest not in the school text books but at home where there was an edition of the Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge. He became enriched with philosophy, physics and the great British poets – Shakespeare and Keats.
After graduating from high school, Still attended Lincoln Memorial University of Harrogate, Tennessee. He worked at the rock quarry in the afternoons and as a library janitor in the evenings. He would often sleep at the library after spending the night reading countless literature. In 1929, he graduated from Lincoln and headed over to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. While there, he became involved in a controversial miner strike in Wilder, Tennessee. The miners were starving due to holding the picket line; Still delivered a truckload of food and clothing for the miners. After a year at Vanderbilt, he transferred to the University of Illinois and earned a graduate degree.
Still tried various professions including the Civil Service Corps, Bible salesman and even had a stint picking cotton in Texas. His friend Don West – a poet, civil rights activist, among other things – offered Still a job organizing recreation programs for a Bible school in Knott County, Kentucky. Still accepted the position but soon became a volunteer librarian at the Hindman Settlement School. Knott County, would become Still’s lifelong home.
James Still served as a Sergeant in the US Army in WWII and was stationed in Egypt in 1944.
Still moved into a two-story log house once occupied by a fine crafter of dulcimers, Jethro Amburgey. He would remain here till his death. Here, he began writing his masterpiece, River of Earth. It was published February 5, 1940. River of Earth depicts the struggles of a family trying to survive by either subsisting off the land or entering the coal mines of the Cumberland Plateau in the reaches of eastern Kentucky. Still depicts the Appalachian mining culture with ease. Mines close often and the family is forced to move and find other means to survive. Still received the Southern Author's Award shortly after publication which he shared with Thomas Wolfe for his work You Can’t Go Home Again. Still went on to publish a few collections of poetry and short stories, a juvenile novel and a compilation of Appalachian local color he collected over the years. The children's book "Jack and the Wonderbeans" was adapted for the stage by the Lexington Children's Theatre in 1992. Still participated in one performance, reading a portion of the book to open the show. He died April 28, 2001 at the age of 94.
James Still (July 16, 1906 – April 28, 2001) was an Appalachian poet, novelist and folklorist. He lived most of his life in a log house along the Dead Mare Branch of Little Carr Creek, Knott County, Kentucky. He was best known for the novel River of Earth, which depicted the struggles of coal mining in eastern Kentucky.
Still’s mother was sixteen when she moved to Alabama due to a tornado destroying the family home. His father was a horse doctor with no formal training. James Still was born July 16, 1906 near Lafayette, Chambers County, Alabama. Still was considered a quiet child but a hard worker. He along with his nine siblings worked the family farm. They farmed cotton, sugar cane, soybeans and corn. At the age of seven, Still began grade school. He found greater interest not in the school text books but at home where there was an edition of the Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge. He became enriched with philosophy, physics and the great British poets – Shakespeare and Keats.
After graduating from high school, Still attended Lincoln Memorial University of Harrogate, Tennessee. He worked at the rock quarry in the afternoons and as a library janitor in the evenings. He would often sleep at the library after spending the night reading countless literature. In 1929, he graduated from Lincoln and headed over to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. While there, he became involved in a controversial miner strike in Wilder, Tennessee. The miners were starving due to holding the picket line; Still delivered a truckload of food and clothing for the miners. After a year at Vanderbilt, he transferred to the University of Illinois and earned a graduate degree.
Still tried various professions including the Civil Service Corps, Bible salesman and even had a stint picking cotton in Texas. His friend Don West – a poet, civil rights activist, among other things – offered Still a job organizing recreation programs for a Bible school in Knott County, Kentucky. Still accepted the position but soon became a volunteer librarian at the Hindman Settlement School. Knott County, would become Still’s lifelong home.
James Still served as a Sergeant in the US Army in WWII and was stationed in Egypt in 1944.
Still moved into a two-story log house once occupied by a fine crafter of dulcimers, Jethro Amburgey. He would remain here till his death. Here, he began writing his masterpiece, River of Earth. It was published February 5, 1940. River of Earth depicts the struggles of a family trying to survive by either subsisting off the land or entering the coal mines of the Cumberland Plateau in the reaches of eastern Kentucky. Still depicts the Appalachian mining culture with ease. Mines close often and the family is forced to move and find other means to survive. Still received the Southern Author's Award shortly after publication which he shared with Thomas Wolfe for his work You Can’t Go Home Again. Still went on to publish a few collections of poetry and short stories, a juvenile novel and a compilation of Appalachian local color he collected over the years. The children's book "Jack and the Wonderbeans" was adapted for the stage by the Lexington Children's Theatre in 1992. Still participated in one performance, reading a portion of the book to open the show. He died April 28, 2001 at the age of 94.
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June 11, 2023
REREAD
This is the back story to James Still’s River of Earth (published in 1940):
Harry Caudill wrote in Night Comes to the Cumberlands, his history of the Cumberland Plateau in eastern Kentucky, that southern Appalachia had been an independent and relatively self-sufficient agricultural society during most of its history. However, in a period of less than two decades that society was destroyed by industrialism.
As a result of the encroachment of the coal mining industry the hill families lost their farms. Some farmers sold their land in order to move to the coal camps and become miners; others simply abandoned their farms in order to do the same; while others lost their land due to the unscrupulous practices of mine operators.
The iron and steel industry boomed in the United States during the 1920s, which in turn increased the demand for coal as a key ingredient in the production of both metals. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, however, the demand for iron and steel plummeted. As a result, coal mining became only a seasonal activity in order to produce coal for heating purposes.
Dean Cagle writes in the foreword of my edition of River of Earth that “[t]he result was a landless, jobless, hungry, perplexed people. Ruined for a way of life they could not control, they were betrayed by this new quicksilver promise that left them idle much of the year."
River of Earth is the story of three years in the life of such a family as seen through the eyes of a boy who is seven-years old when the story begins. When the book opens we find the Baldridge family living on a farm on a bald ridge that had only one tree.
“Morning was bright and rain-fresh. The sharp sunlight fell slantwise upon the worn limestone earth of the hills, and our house squatted weathered and dark on the bald slope. Yellow-bellied sapsuckers drilled their oblong holes in the black birch by the house, now leafing from tight-curled buds.”
The conflict between agriculture and industrialism that transformed southern Appalachia also divided the Baldridge family. Brack Baldridge is hard working and in many ways a good husband and father who sees no danger in industrialism. He sees it as progress and, furthermore, argues that he possesses no aptitude for farming and that he was born to be a miner.
His wife Alpha is more in tune with the land and longs for a more stable life living in one place, tilling the land, and not moving from coal camp to coal camp.
“Forever I’ve wanted to set us down in a lone spot, a place certain and enduring, with room to swing arm and elbow, a garden-piece for fresh victuals, and a cow to furnish milk for the baby. So many places we’ve lived – the far side one mine camp and next to the slag pile of another. Hardburly. Lizzyblue. Tibbley. I’m longing to set me down shorely and raise my chaps proper.”
Father’s ears reddened. He spoke, a grain angrily. “It was never meant for a body to be full content on the face of this earth. Against my wont it is to be trading the camps, but it’s bread I’m hunting, regular bread with a mite of grease on it. To make and provide, it’s the only trade I know, and I work willing.”
Just as agriculture lost its battle with coal mining, so was Apha eventually forced to surrender to Brack’s wishes.
Dean Cagle points out that River of Earth and The Grapes of Wrath were published within a year of each other and by the same publisher. He writes that they are the only chronicles of the Depression that continues to be read to this day. He says that “the major difference between them is that Steinbeck’s story deals with a calamity that has struck America only once in its lifetime, while Still is writing of the struggles that have plagued the mountain people since the country was settled.” And “although the Joads travel halfway across the country and the Baldridge family moves only the few miles separating the coal camps from the farm, both books are equally an odyssey of a people in search of a promised land.”
Still’s book, however, is no polemic and is not overtly political in the manner of Steinbeck’s classic, nor does he only sympathize with Alpha and farming at the expense of Brack and coal mining. Even though he was a staunch environmentalist and grew up on a farm in northern Alabama and did some farming after moving to eastern Kentucky at age twenty-six, he is able to see Brack’s side of the issue, though it is also apparent that his true sympathies lie with Alpha.
“The waters ran yellow, draining acid from the mines, cankering rocks in its bed. The rocks were snuffy brown, eaten and crumbly. There were not fishes swimming the eddies, nor striders looking at themselves in the waterglass. Bare willows leaned over. They threw a golden shadow over the water.”
Still was a novelist, a poet, and a folklorist. In River of Earth he used the language of a poet and the eye of a painter to create vivid word pictures of the land and its people. He wrote about what he saw and about what he heard, and as one critic stated, it is obvious that he was not only an observer of life, but that he was also a listener.
“During the short winter days the sun was feeble and pale, shining without heat. Frost lay thick in the mornings, and crusts of hard earth rose in the night on little toadstools of ice. Footsteps upon the ground rang metal clear, and there was a pattern of furred feet where rabbits came down out of the barren fields into the yard.”
The following passage explains the title of the book and is also a clear demonstration of Still’s knowledge of mountain speech and his ability to authentically express it:
“I was borned in a ridgepocket…. I never seed the sunball withouten heisting my chin. My eyes were sot upon the hills from the beginning. Till I come on the Word in this Good Book, I used to think a mountain was the standingest object in the sight o’ God. Hit says here they go skipping and hopping like sheep, a-rising and a-falling. These hills are just dirt waves, washing through eternity. My brethren, they hain’t a hill standing so proud but hit’ll sink to the low ground o’ sorrow. Oh, my children, where air we going on this mighty river of earth, a-borning, begetting, and a-dying – the living and the dead riding the waters? Where air it sweeping us?” – From Preacher Sim Mobberly’s sermon
Still’s story could have been so dark that it would be depressing to read, but like William Gay in our own day, he created a character, Uncle Jolly, whose contagious optimism and sunny disposition never failed to lighten the mood and give the reader a break from all the gloom and despair. There are also two rebellious actions by women in this male dominated world that surprised me.
------------------------------------------
"James Still was, and still is, the greatest writer of hill culture in Kentucky.” – Chris Offutt, author of Country Dark
“James Still, one of the greatest writers of all time, was a huge influence on my own writing and my understanding of how to be a writer.” – Lee Smith, author of Dimestore
This is the back story to James Still’s River of Earth (published in 1940):
Harry Caudill wrote in Night Comes to the Cumberlands, his history of the Cumberland Plateau in eastern Kentucky, that southern Appalachia had been an independent and relatively self-sufficient agricultural society during most of its history. However, in a period of less than two decades that society was destroyed by industrialism.
As a result of the encroachment of the coal mining industry the hill families lost their farms. Some farmers sold their land in order to move to the coal camps and become miners; others simply abandoned their farms in order to do the same; while others lost their land due to the unscrupulous practices of mine operators.
The iron and steel industry boomed in the United States during the 1920s, which in turn increased the demand for coal as a key ingredient in the production of both metals. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, however, the demand for iron and steel plummeted. As a result, coal mining became only a seasonal activity in order to produce coal for heating purposes.
Dean Cagle writes in the foreword of my edition of River of Earth that “[t]he result was a landless, jobless, hungry, perplexed people. Ruined for a way of life they could not control, they were betrayed by this new quicksilver promise that left them idle much of the year."
River of Earth is the story of three years in the life of such a family as seen through the eyes of a boy who is seven-years old when the story begins. When the book opens we find the Baldridge family living on a farm on a bald ridge that had only one tree.
“Morning was bright and rain-fresh. The sharp sunlight fell slantwise upon the worn limestone earth of the hills, and our house squatted weathered and dark on the bald slope. Yellow-bellied sapsuckers drilled their oblong holes in the black birch by the house, now leafing from tight-curled buds.”
The conflict between agriculture and industrialism that transformed southern Appalachia also divided the Baldridge family. Brack Baldridge is hard working and in many ways a good husband and father who sees no danger in industrialism. He sees it as progress and, furthermore, argues that he possesses no aptitude for farming and that he was born to be a miner.
His wife Alpha is more in tune with the land and longs for a more stable life living in one place, tilling the land, and not moving from coal camp to coal camp.
“Forever I’ve wanted to set us down in a lone spot, a place certain and enduring, with room to swing arm and elbow, a garden-piece for fresh victuals, and a cow to furnish milk for the baby. So many places we’ve lived – the far side one mine camp and next to the slag pile of another. Hardburly. Lizzyblue. Tibbley. I’m longing to set me down shorely and raise my chaps proper.”
Father’s ears reddened. He spoke, a grain angrily. “It was never meant for a body to be full content on the face of this earth. Against my wont it is to be trading the camps, but it’s bread I’m hunting, regular bread with a mite of grease on it. To make and provide, it’s the only trade I know, and I work willing.”
Just as agriculture lost its battle with coal mining, so was Apha eventually forced to surrender to Brack’s wishes.
Dean Cagle points out that River of Earth and The Grapes of Wrath were published within a year of each other and by the same publisher. He writes that they are the only chronicles of the Depression that continues to be read to this day. He says that “the major difference between them is that Steinbeck’s story deals with a calamity that has struck America only once in its lifetime, while Still is writing of the struggles that have plagued the mountain people since the country was settled.” And “although the Joads travel halfway across the country and the Baldridge family moves only the few miles separating the coal camps from the farm, both books are equally an odyssey of a people in search of a promised land.”
Still’s book, however, is no polemic and is not overtly political in the manner of Steinbeck’s classic, nor does he only sympathize with Alpha and farming at the expense of Brack and coal mining. Even though he was a staunch environmentalist and grew up on a farm in northern Alabama and did some farming after moving to eastern Kentucky at age twenty-six, he is able to see Brack’s side of the issue, though it is also apparent that his true sympathies lie with Alpha.
“The waters ran yellow, draining acid from the mines, cankering rocks in its bed. The rocks were snuffy brown, eaten and crumbly. There were not fishes swimming the eddies, nor striders looking at themselves in the waterglass. Bare willows leaned over. They threw a golden shadow over the water.”
Still was a novelist, a poet, and a folklorist. In River of Earth he used the language of a poet and the eye of a painter to create vivid word pictures of the land and its people. He wrote about what he saw and about what he heard, and as one critic stated, it is obvious that he was not only an observer of life, but that he was also a listener.
“During the short winter days the sun was feeble and pale, shining without heat. Frost lay thick in the mornings, and crusts of hard earth rose in the night on little toadstools of ice. Footsteps upon the ground rang metal clear, and there was a pattern of furred feet where rabbits came down out of the barren fields into the yard.”
The following passage explains the title of the book and is also a clear demonstration of Still’s knowledge of mountain speech and his ability to authentically express it:
“I was borned in a ridgepocket…. I never seed the sunball withouten heisting my chin. My eyes were sot upon the hills from the beginning. Till I come on the Word in this Good Book, I used to think a mountain was the standingest object in the sight o’ God. Hit says here they go skipping and hopping like sheep, a-rising and a-falling. These hills are just dirt waves, washing through eternity. My brethren, they hain’t a hill standing so proud but hit’ll sink to the low ground o’ sorrow. Oh, my children, where air we going on this mighty river of earth, a-borning, begetting, and a-dying – the living and the dead riding the waters? Where air it sweeping us?” – From Preacher Sim Mobberly’s sermon
Still’s story could have been so dark that it would be depressing to read, but like William Gay in our own day, he created a character, Uncle Jolly, whose contagious optimism and sunny disposition never failed to lighten the mood and give the reader a break from all the gloom and despair. There are also two rebellious actions by women in this male dominated world that surprised me.
------------------------------------------
"James Still was, and still is, the greatest writer of hill culture in Kentucky.” – Chris Offutt, author of Country Dark
“James Still, one of the greatest writers of all time, was a huge influence on my own writing and my understanding of how to be a writer.” – Lee Smith, author of Dimestore
June 30, 2016
I got this book through my library after reading about it in Lee Smith's memoir, "Dimestore". She grew up in the coal mining community of Grundy, VA, and loved this book for it's depiction of the people and their language. After reading it, so do I.
A warning to anyone who needs a linear story and involved plot....this is not your book. This is a "slice of life" story, 3 years in the life of a family, told from the point of view of a son who is only 7 at the beginning. The dialect of these mountain people of Kentucky reads like poetry, and their love of the land and their family shines on every page. Life was harsh, but no one expected it to be anything else, so they coped as best they could. The ending is abrupt, leaving no real hope for change, but not hopeless, as this family was willing to work hard enough to pull through. Thanks, Ms. Smith, for the recommendation.
A warning to anyone who needs a linear story and involved plot....this is not your book. This is a "slice of life" story, 3 years in the life of a family, told from the point of view of a son who is only 7 at the beginning. The dialect of these mountain people of Kentucky reads like poetry, and their love of the land and their family shines on every page. Life was harsh, but no one expected it to be anything else, so they coped as best they could. The ending is abrupt, leaving no real hope for change, but not hopeless, as this family was willing to work hard enough to pull through. Thanks, Ms. Smith, for the recommendation.
December 1, 2018
The first thing you notice about this story of the depression era in the mining towns of Eastern Kentucky is the beauty of the writing itself and the genuine flavor of the dialog. James Still captures the stark, almost hopeless, situation of the families, while simultaneously showing the strength and endurance of the individuals and their connections to one another. I was struck by the generous nature of the people, who scraped into their near-empty larders to help one another survive their common perils.
One of the themes explored here seems to be the separation of man from nature. As the family is pulled from working fields on farms to living in camps and working coal mines, they seem to be separating themselves from a birthright and a bond that even they themselves do not understand.
The earth parted; it fell back from the shovel plow; it boiled over the share. I walked the fresh furrow and balls of dirt welled between my toes. There was a smell of old mosses, or bruised sassafras roots, of ground new-turned.
The share rustled like drifted leaves. It spoke up through the handles. I felt the earth flowing, steady as time.
There is also the conviction that whatever happens, however difficult or unjust, life continues. Indeed, it springs up from death itself.
Shot so his life's blood flowed a river. Yonder, up Lean Neck where the road comes off the hill and crosses the creek, years ago. The spot is marked, I hear. Marked peculiar. A locust post was driv on the spot, and I hear it tuck root.
That tree is a reminder of the spot of a death, but it is also a reminder that life, and family, continue. The locust tree itself rises from a post, unintentional and improbable, but determined and strong.
There is a thread of humor that runs through the novel as well that offsets the bleak conditions and reinforces the idea that even though the life is hard, the people are not necessarily unhappy. They are, in fact, accepting and uncomplaining; strong and rugged, even the children.
After several unsatisfying reads, it was a joy to open a book and find a voice that resonated, a world that seemed authentic, and a narrator who could convey his experiences with meaning and honesty. My thanks to the Southern Literary Trail for another dynamite read.
One of the themes explored here seems to be the separation of man from nature. As the family is pulled from working fields on farms to living in camps and working coal mines, they seem to be separating themselves from a birthright and a bond that even they themselves do not understand.
The earth parted; it fell back from the shovel plow; it boiled over the share. I walked the fresh furrow and balls of dirt welled between my toes. There was a smell of old mosses, or bruised sassafras roots, of ground new-turned.
The share rustled like drifted leaves. It spoke up through the handles. I felt the earth flowing, steady as time.
There is also the conviction that whatever happens, however difficult or unjust, life continues. Indeed, it springs up from death itself.
Shot so his life's blood flowed a river. Yonder, up Lean Neck where the road comes off the hill and crosses the creek, years ago. The spot is marked, I hear. Marked peculiar. A locust post was driv on the spot, and I hear it tuck root.
That tree is a reminder of the spot of a death, but it is also a reminder that life, and family, continue. The locust tree itself rises from a post, unintentional and improbable, but determined and strong.
There is a thread of humor that runs through the novel as well that offsets the bleak conditions and reinforces the idea that even though the life is hard, the people are not necessarily unhappy. They are, in fact, accepting and uncomplaining; strong and rugged, even the children.
After several unsatisfying reads, it was a joy to open a book and find a voice that resonated, a world that seemed authentic, and a narrator who could convey his experiences with meaning and honesty. My thanks to the Southern Literary Trail for another dynamite read.
December 23, 2025
A thoroughly enjoyable, plotless account of the Baldridge family, barely scratching out a living in the coalfield of Eastern Kentucky, during the early part of the 20th century. This is a part of the country, in the Appalachian mountain range, that is deeply beautiful and desperately poor.
The main focus is on the Baldridge family, which is emblematic of other families in the region at the time, families that were moving from lives of subsistence farming to better paying but highly irregular work in the coalfields. The Baldridge family did a little of both, out of necessity. They farmed and could keep the family in enough beans and corn and squash to get them through the year, with some lean months as provisions ran low and they held back seed corn for the coming year. Work in the coalfields wasn’t regular enough — it was on demand as colder months settled in and the need for coal went up.
It couldn’t be clearer that this novel is telling a tale about two different ways of relying on the land for subsistence. On one hand a life of farming that might keep a family on a plot of land for lifetime, allowing them to enrich it as much as they took sustenance from it. The contrast to coal mining is obvious: a model of pure extraction and itinerancy as families chased jobs throughout the valley, in mines and companies that offered the better wages and hours.
Over and above these economic motivations, however, the novel is a book about place. The sentiment is beautifully captured in a sermon by Brother Sim Mobberly, which includes these lines:
Readers can tell that James Still loved this part of the country and his descriptions are evocative and full of emotion. I can picture the sights and sounds. Here’s one:
I have copied down many of these openings because they are a joy to read.
The main focus is on the Baldridge family, which is emblematic of other families in the region at the time, families that were moving from lives of subsistence farming to better paying but highly irregular work in the coalfields. The Baldridge family did a little of both, out of necessity. They farmed and could keep the family in enough beans and corn and squash to get them through the year, with some lean months as provisions ran low and they held back seed corn for the coming year. Work in the coalfields wasn’t regular enough — it was on demand as colder months settled in and the need for coal went up.
It couldn’t be clearer that this novel is telling a tale about two different ways of relying on the land for subsistence. On one hand a life of farming that might keep a family on a plot of land for lifetime, allowing them to enrich it as much as they took sustenance from it. The contrast to coal mining is obvious: a model of pure extraction and itinerancy as families chased jobs throughout the valley, in mines and companies that offered the better wages and hours.
Over and above these economic motivations, however, the novel is a book about place. The sentiment is beautifully captured in a sermon by Brother Sim Mobberly, which includes these lines:
These hills are jist dirt waves, washing through eternity. My brethern, they hain't a valley so low but what hit'll rise agin. They hain't a hill standing so proud but hit'll sink to the low ground o' sorrow. Oh, my proud children, where air we going on this mighty river of earth, aborning, begetting, and a-dying the living and the dead riding the waters? Where air it sweeping us?..." (76)
Readers can tell that James Still loved this part of the country and his descriptions are evocative and full of emotion. I can picture the sights and sounds. Here’s one:
“January was a bell in Lean Neck Valley. The ring of an ax was a mile wide, and all passage over the spewed-up earth was lifted on frosty air and sounded against the fields of ice” (110)
I have copied down many of these openings because they are a joy to read.
November 27, 2018
Written the same year as The Grapes Of Wrath ( 1940) and easily drawing comparisons, this is a lyrical "slice of life" story simply told by a young boy whose parents earnestly struggle to make ends meet while farming and coal mining in the Appalachians.
Harkening back to a time when a full dinner plate for your child meant plenty and a bare tree branch decorated in eggshells became a treasure, this was a good December read as a personal reminder to simplify holiday expenditures and enjoy more charitable giving.
12/18 Read for On The Southern Literary Trail club.
Harkening back to a time when a full dinner plate for your child meant plenty and a bare tree branch decorated in eggshells became a treasure, this was a good December read as a personal reminder to simplify holiday expenditures and enjoy more charitable giving.
12/18 Read for On The Southern Literary Trail club.
August 9, 2016
I read this book several years ago. As I remember it, the plot is weak but it is a book of great lyric beauty. I do not think it would appeal to everyone but those who love Appalachia will appreciate it.
December 3, 2018
Full review to follow.
November 9, 2019
The mines on Little Carr closed in March. Winter had been mild, the snows scant and frost-thin upon the ground. Robins stayed the season through, and sapsuckers came early to drill the black birch beside our house. Though Father had worked in the mines, we did not live in the camps.
Thus starts a story that is more about a place and a time period than it is about plot and characters. This is told by one boy, and he describes his family, their life, and the location, but it could be a generic family. In some ways it reminds me of Rawlings' The Yearling. (And of Ivan Doig.) Here, too, the family struggles to keep food on the table. The kids roam the wilds and do chores, but receive very little in the way of formal education.
p 76: The preacher is speaking. His words give rise to the title:
These hills are just dirt waves, washing through eternity. My brethren, they hain't a valley so low but what hit'll rise agin. They hain't a hill standing so proud but hit'll sink to the low ground o' sorrow. Oh my children, where air we going on this mighty river of earth, a-borning, begetting, and a-dying—the living and the dead riding the waters? Where air it sweeping us?
Yes. The dialect is heavy, which can be frustrating, but it didn't bother me here. In fact, without the dialect, the story would have lost its strength and 'flavor.' Even the names contributed to the flavor: Uncle Jolly, Aunt Rilla, Uncle Luce, Lala, Crilla, Tishy, Lue, Fran, Nezzie Uncle Toll and Aunt Sue Ella. (all from p 178).
The author was the first poet laureate of Kentucky ... which doesn't surprise me. He chooses and uses words beautifully.
Thus starts a story that is more about a place and a time period than it is about plot and characters. This is told by one boy, and he describes his family, their life, and the location, but it could be a generic family. In some ways it reminds me of Rawlings' The Yearling. (And of Ivan Doig.) Here, too, the family struggles to keep food on the table. The kids roam the wilds and do chores, but receive very little in the way of formal education.
p 76: The preacher is speaking. His words give rise to the title:
These hills are just dirt waves, washing through eternity. My brethren, they hain't a valley so low but what hit'll rise agin. They hain't a hill standing so proud but hit'll sink to the low ground o' sorrow. Oh my children, where air we going on this mighty river of earth, a-borning, begetting, and a-dying—the living and the dead riding the waters? Where air it sweeping us?
Yes. The dialect is heavy, which can be frustrating, but it didn't bother me here. In fact, without the dialect, the story would have lost its strength and 'flavor.' Even the names contributed to the flavor: Uncle Jolly, Aunt Rilla, Uncle Luce, Lala, Crilla, Tishy, Lue, Fran, Nezzie Uncle Toll and Aunt Sue Ella. (all from p 178).
The author was the first poet laureate of Kentucky ... which doesn't surprise me. He chooses and uses words beautifully.
May 12, 2012
In James Still’s 1940 novel River of Earth, which takes place in Kentucky, we are offered not only a fascinating coming-of-age story with a striking setting, but references and historical first-hand knowledge of how life played out in the mountains and coal-camps of the region.
The main character’s father, Brack, is presented as a hard-working man, though he puts his own pride in helping kin-folk above of tending to his wife’s and children’s needs first. He works as a coal-miner, a mountaineer, a homesteader, and a farmer as opportunity arises, and in this, Still is cleverly able to show us many aspects of different Appalachian occupations while using only one character and one family.
The view of coal-mining is fascinating and accurate to my knowledge. While coal-mining is oftentimes romanticized, those in the business have a great and simultaneous respect and loathing for it, always wanting to be doing it, never wanting to subject their children to it. This seems to be how it is presented here.
While the father is presented as having a good work ethic, there were varying degrees of this among characters. One set of his cousins will work, but they’re forever playing childish tricks. Another refuses to work, and on and on. Increasingly, the latter type is becoming more prominent in the region, or at least in my home-state. It is truly a social economic problem. I wonder oftentimes if this may be solely for a reason like Uncle Samp’s, in that he simply does not want to work.
Adding to the authentic feel of the novel are the choices of unusual names the author uses for his characters, such as Kite, Jace, Lizzie Blue, Oates, Aus, Fletch, Darb, Kell, Euly, etc. It brought me in mind of the poem “Names” from Jim Wayne Miller’s “The Brier Poems.”Also in authenticity is the written dialect, always a controversial subject amongst writers.
I was surprised how big a deal a funeral and grave of a deceased loved-one was. The mother, Alpha, seemed to be compromising with the reluctance of her husband to have a funeral by saying, “It will ONLY be a one day funeral.” [Emphasis added.] I had heard of the Appalachian/Celtic tradition of stopping the clock on the hour and minute of one’s death, but the rites of covering the grave in a white sheet, having an arbor (and ideally a picture of the deceased), and building a rain-shed over the grave are unusual to me. Why do these people (also based on other readings I’ve done) seem to be so obsessed with death?
This book is filled with beautiful descriptions of the natural surroundings of Appalachia. They are accurate, stunning, and in stark contrast to the general roughness and darkness of the people, their ways, and their mindsets. It’s what I believe is one of the many ironies of the region (also presented as an irony in Catherine Marshall’s acclaimed Appalachian novel Christy).
This enjoyable novel has so many levels of story, plot, culture, and character in it, more than can be studied in a review. One of the underlying themes is surely one of hope and growth. As Brother Sim testified, “Till I come on the Word in this Good Book, I used to think a mountain was the standingest object in the sight o’ God. [But] they go…a-rising and a-falling. These hills are jist dirt waves, washing through eternity. My brethren, they hain’t a valley so low but what hit’ll rise agin.”
The main character’s father, Brack, is presented as a hard-working man, though he puts his own pride in helping kin-folk above of tending to his wife’s and children’s needs first. He works as a coal-miner, a mountaineer, a homesteader, and a farmer as opportunity arises, and in this, Still is cleverly able to show us many aspects of different Appalachian occupations while using only one character and one family.
The view of coal-mining is fascinating and accurate to my knowledge. While coal-mining is oftentimes romanticized, those in the business have a great and simultaneous respect and loathing for it, always wanting to be doing it, never wanting to subject their children to it. This seems to be how it is presented here.
While the father is presented as having a good work ethic, there were varying degrees of this among characters. One set of his cousins will work, but they’re forever playing childish tricks. Another refuses to work, and on and on. Increasingly, the latter type is becoming more prominent in the region, or at least in my home-state. It is truly a social economic problem. I wonder oftentimes if this may be solely for a reason like Uncle Samp’s, in that he simply does not want to work.
Adding to the authentic feel of the novel are the choices of unusual names the author uses for his characters, such as Kite, Jace, Lizzie Blue, Oates, Aus, Fletch, Darb, Kell, Euly, etc. It brought me in mind of the poem “Names” from Jim Wayne Miller’s “The Brier Poems.”Also in authenticity is the written dialect, always a controversial subject amongst writers.
I was surprised how big a deal a funeral and grave of a deceased loved-one was. The mother, Alpha, seemed to be compromising with the reluctance of her husband to have a funeral by saying, “It will ONLY be a one day funeral.” [Emphasis added.] I had heard of the Appalachian/Celtic tradition of stopping the clock on the hour and minute of one’s death, but the rites of covering the grave in a white sheet, having an arbor (and ideally a picture of the deceased), and building a rain-shed over the grave are unusual to me. Why do these people (also based on other readings I’ve done) seem to be so obsessed with death?
This book is filled with beautiful descriptions of the natural surroundings of Appalachia. They are accurate, stunning, and in stark contrast to the general roughness and darkness of the people, their ways, and their mindsets. It’s what I believe is one of the many ironies of the region (also presented as an irony in Catherine Marshall’s acclaimed Appalachian novel Christy).
This enjoyable novel has so many levels of story, plot, culture, and character in it, more than can be studied in a review. One of the underlying themes is surely one of hope and growth. As Brother Sim testified, “Till I come on the Word in this Good Book, I used to think a mountain was the standingest object in the sight o’ God. [But] they go…a-rising and a-falling. These hills are jist dirt waves, washing through eternity. My brethren, they hain’t a valley so low but what hit’ll rise agin.”
October 17, 2016
A beautiful, beautiful book. Written in 1940, it's a gem of Appalachian literature. Reminds me a lot of The Grapes of Wrath. In the 1920s, Appalachian farmers who were completely self-sufficient became enamoured of the quick and plentiful wages of coal miners. This was all well and good until the demand for coal decreased. "The result was a landless, jobless, hungry, perplexed people", says Dean Cadle in the forward. James Still writes about one family in this predicament. His writing is so lovely and artful. Thank you to Lee Smith for recommending this book to all and sundry.
February 2, 2022
How do you review a book that is so unique, considered a classic, and offer up what hasn't already been said?
You don't. You don't try to recreate what's already there. That would be like saying, I'm going to invent a car! (how many variations are out there today?)
What I will say is this book has my heart. It wasn't always an easy read because Still wrote his story in the manner of speech used decades ago. I imagine there are areas today where it exists. I'd love to go visit and sit and just listen. I found it a fascinating "study" of a long ago language and way of life. Likely the most accurate account of both ever.
It tells the story of a young seven year old boy living with his siblings, older sister Euly, younger brother Fletch, parents, and a variety of family members who drop in and out of their lives, and home throughout the story. It tells of the challenge of mining, camp life, a mother's wishes and desires, and a father's need to reconcile the knowledge of taking food out of his children's mouths to help out other family members in need. Therein lies the friction between mother and father, keenly observed by the young boy.
Highly recommend. An authentic capture of a bygone life.
You don't. You don't try to recreate what's already there. That would be like saying, I'm going to invent a car! (how many variations are out there today?)
What I will say is this book has my heart. It wasn't always an easy read because Still wrote his story in the manner of speech used decades ago. I imagine there are areas today where it exists. I'd love to go visit and sit and just listen. I found it a fascinating "study" of a long ago language and way of life. Likely the most accurate account of both ever.
It tells the story of a young seven year old boy living with his siblings, older sister Euly, younger brother Fletch, parents, and a variety of family members who drop in and out of their lives, and home throughout the story. It tells of the challenge of mining, camp life, a mother's wishes and desires, and a father's need to reconcile the knowledge of taking food out of his children's mouths to help out other family members in need. Therein lies the friction between mother and father, keenly observed by the young boy.
Highly recommend. An authentic capture of a bygone life.
July 22, 2021
Questo bellissimo romanzo, pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1940, è il racconto dele vicissitudini di una famiglia allargata del Kentucky nel periodo della Grande Depressione. Sullo sfondo di una natura selvaggia a tratti spietata e di una povertà disperata, viene rappresentato il contrasto tra un’economia rurale di sussistenza e la proletarizzazione industriale dei campi minerari, dove non si possiede nulla più che i propri figli e ci si sposta da un luogo all’altro inseguendo un lavoro. È una lotta per la sopravvivenza raccontata in prima persona con gli occhi e il cuore dal ragazzino protagonista, e, a dispetto del tema forte narrato, la speranza e la dignità hanno comunque il sopravvento sulle avversità e la disperazione, nonostante sia evidenziata da più voci l’ineluttabilità del destino “Non puoi diventare niente di meglio di come sei stato allevato. Se nasci in un campo puoi solo farti i denti sui vagoncini ribaltabili. È come la calamita contro il metallo. Impossibile sottrarsi. Qualsiasi cosa sogni di diventare, finirai comunque per scavare sottoterra.”. Si sente l’eco di grandi narratori americani come Twain, London o Steinbeck, per l’ambientazione o l’uso marcato di soprannomi o per le spassose imprecazioni basate sulle analogie, ma ho trovato la scrittura assolutamente originale.
È quasi d’obbligo accompagnare la lettura con le bellissime fotografie d’epoca, in bianco e nero, di Ben Shahn (L’occhio fotografico di Ben Shahn, Gabriele Mazzotta Editore, 1975) e a questo link un piccolo assaggio:
Archivo Historico Minero
È quasi d’obbligo accompagnare la lettura con le bellissime fotografie d’epoca, in bianco e nero, di Ben Shahn (L’occhio fotografico di Ben Shahn, Gabriele Mazzotta Editore, 1975) e a questo link un piccolo assaggio:
Archivo Historico Minero
November 15, 2010
I'd like to see the English teachers of Upstate, SC put this one in the curriculum. This story, set in the coal mining region of eastern Kentucky during the depression, is more relevant to our area in that time period (i.e. a life shuffle between the cotton mill villages and the farms) than The Grapes of Wrath which they cram down your throat. Honestly, it's one of the most beautifully written stories I've read, an interesting and accurate rendering of the people and circumstances.
November 9, 2014
Although I've lived plenty of my years in the mountains, I'm not from them. Southern Appalachia, yes, but my folks lived mostly in the valleys, not in the hills. Mountaineers were (and still are) a different breed. I've read several novels lately set in these mountains. Harsh. Rough. Unforgiving. Living without hope is a hard way to live. I'm glad writers record these lives, but I've read enough of them now to last me a spell.
November 22, 2020
Originally published in 1939, this was James Still’s debut novel. He mainly wrote poetry; this being the result of an expanded short story. He writes vivid and poetic descriptions of the Kentucky mountains, and it’s primitive and destitute people, but without sentimentality. Seen through the eyes of an eight year old boy, rather than a plot, the novel portrays day to day life of a family, told with the harsh local dialogue.
As a story, it does not grip, but it has charm as a chronicle of tough Appalachian folk and their lives.
As a story, it does not grip, but it has charm as a chronicle of tough Appalachian folk and their lives.
And behind them a little bull of a man came walking. He wore a mine cap with a carbide lamp atop. Thick his chest was, and a fleece of black hairs came curling out of his shirt.
He took off his cap and his head was as clean as a shaven jaw.
I thought how I would tell Uncle Jolly and Grandma about him. I spoke the words aloud to know their sound.
“A fella not five feet high came along, and I skeered him proper. A low standing fella.
Oh, he was a little keg of a man, round and thick, and double jinted.
A mountycat he thought I was, fixing to spring.”
February 11, 2014
This book is beautifully written. The two rivers of earth are the garden soil and the coal seams. The lad who tells the tale is endearing in every way. He is full of quirks, afraid of birth and blood and yet brave when it comes to some dire exigency. He loves his grandma's stories and his crazy uncle's antics. Grandma turns out to be more complex than any of the characters. There is a dynamic tension between the father's yen to go down in the mines and the mother's love of the land.
July 4, 2015
We're going to Kentucky on a mission trip later this month, so I thought it would be appropriate to read this classic of Appalachian literature. Written in 1940, Still uses mountain dialect (it's like reading the language of furreners) but it is achingly beautiful, sometimes. Mining vs. subsistence farming and written from a child's view of the adult world. Lovely, poignant, sad...
October 26, 2017
Where’s the spot for 10 stars! Wonderful book.
May 16, 2018
James Still’s language is so beautiful, and paints a vivid picture of life in the hills of Kentucky during the early decades of the twentieth century.
April 22, 2015
River of Earth, originally published in 1940, is a classic tale of Appalachian coal miners, dirt-poor, ever-proud people living deep in the mountains, crags and hollers, trying to scratch out a living, sometimes from pretty much nothing. How does one grow a crop if one has eaten the seeds to avoid starvation the winter before? And how does one survive as a miner when the days of available work shrink from five, to four, to two, to “Mine’s Closed”?
Initially, I was drawn to this book for two reasons. One is an interest in the early United Mine Workers, a stark, brutal organizing effort that is actually nowhere in this story. I got the book for Christmas upon my own request, and one might expect I’d be disappointed that no union shows up at all here.
And yet I wasn’t. Note that five star rating. My other reason for wanting to read it, is that one of my favorite authors mentions it in the text of one of his novels, and I wrote it down. And as I read this bittersweet tale of rural Caucasian poverty, I found something unexpected. I’ve been finding it more than one might think lately. I found ghosts and echoes of my own ancestors.
My grandfather was a miner; he died of black lung. But when a relative embarked on a genealogical expedition, I found that three of my four grandparents had roots in that same hardscrabble region, the part of Eastern Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia where a body had to more or less guess, back in the 1700’s, which side of the state line he was on.
By 1940, when this book was published, my folks had cleared out of there, but I still heard little speech mannerisms, which cultural geographers call “cultural artifacts”, that had embedded themselves and dropped into the speech of my elders back in the day.
Alpha, usually referred to in the first-person narrative as “Mother”, has married down. She fell in love with Brack many years ago, and although there was at least one wealthy man that set his cap for her, she chose Brack instead. And she doesn’t complain about the family’s state of poverty, not even when there is so little food that she pretends to eat while the children have their supper so that they won’t realize she is making a single mouthful last an entire meal. No, Brack is the one she wanted, and he is what she’s got. She’d do it again, she says.
But oh, how she wants to settle on a little spot of land! At one point they have rented a farm that is humble, yet provides enough food that they can winter over without fear of starvation. It’s on a hilltop with a view, and it has access to woods nearby where in spring, wild salad greens can be picked. It’s all she wants. That, and for Baby Green to survive. He’s been feeling poorly, crying from hunger. Finally, one ugly winter when the food has nearly run out, she apologetically takes a little more food at table. She is ashamed to do it, but she knows the baby needs milk, and it’s the only way she’ll be able to feed him.
She loves that baby so.
Just a plot of land where she can grow things and settle into the house without constantly being required to pick up and move to the next coal town, a mining town which might or might not be hiring, and where the air will clog the children’s lungs and coat the inside of the house with fine black grit, no matter how many used tobacco plugs are stuffed into its cracks. She is sure that if her little family takes care of the earth, it will take care of them. It worked for her mother, and it will work for her family too…if only she can persuade Brack.
And she can’t. Brack is a miner. He believes he was destined to mine coal. And wouldn’t it be nice if his many hanger-on relations, those that come to visit and never leave, felt inclined to do the same? Or to help turn the ground, when they have some to turn? Or to do something other than eat more than anybody else and complain that the food isn’t good enough?
The reader has to admit that this is a wicked-hard dilemma. If one’s relatives are likely to starve if turned out of the house midwinter with nowhere to go, can one send them? But if one’s children are going hungry because the relatives are eating a lot of the food that was supposed to be theirs, can one continue to feed them? It’s a point of contention between Mother and Father. Father says he won’t turn his kin out; Mother says the children are too thin and hungry, and couldn’t his kin do a lick of work for once?
At one point Grandma needs help, but Mother can’t go to her, because the baby is ill. The food supply problem and the Grandma problem are partially solved by sending our narrator and protagonist, still elementary school aged, off to live with her and help her run her farm. Grandma is the embodiment of a work ethic. Rheumatic and 78 years old, she crawls down the rows of crops in order to harvest a few puny potatoes. She reflects on her married life, before her husband died, and her pride in having none of them shot to death, so common in these nail-tough hills:
"Eight me and Boone brought into this world, and every one a wanted child. Four died young, and natural. Three boys and one girl we raised. My boys were a mite stubheaded, as growing ones air. But nary a son I had pleasured himself with shooting off guns, a-rim-recking at Hardin Town and in the camps, a-playing at cards and mixing in knife scrapes, traipsing thar and yon, weaving drunk. Nor they never drew blood for doing’s sake, as I’ve got knowing of. Feisty though, and ready to fight fair fist if the other feller wanted it that a way. I allus said, times come when a feller’s got to fight. Come that time let him strike hard where it’ll do most good, a-measuring stick with stone, best battler win. The devil can’t be fit lessen you use fire.
It occurred to me as I read it, although I could hear Grandma speak in that dialect in my head clear as day, that the dialect would wreck havoc upon the eyes and mind of someone with a mother tongue other than English. I handed it to my husband and pointed to a paragraph. He’s been in the USA for decades and speaks several languages, but he reluctantly told me that although he could understand it if I read it aloud with inflections where they belonged, it was really too much on the printed page.
With that sole caveat, I recommend this slim but magnificent story. The setting is nearly a character unto itself (although I had to get online to figure out what a paw-paw fruit was). The dialogue and its point and counterpoint, Mother advocating for the Earth, and Father advocating for dynamite and despoilment, is bound to resonate in this fragile ecological time.
But you could just read it because it is amazing literary fiction.
Initially, I was drawn to this book for two reasons. One is an interest in the early United Mine Workers, a stark, brutal organizing effort that is actually nowhere in this story. I got the book for Christmas upon my own request, and one might expect I’d be disappointed that no union shows up at all here.
And yet I wasn’t. Note that five star rating. My other reason for wanting to read it, is that one of my favorite authors mentions it in the text of one of his novels, and I wrote it down. And as I read this bittersweet tale of rural Caucasian poverty, I found something unexpected. I’ve been finding it more than one might think lately. I found ghosts and echoes of my own ancestors.
My grandfather was a miner; he died of black lung. But when a relative embarked on a genealogical expedition, I found that three of my four grandparents had roots in that same hardscrabble region, the part of Eastern Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia where a body had to more or less guess, back in the 1700’s, which side of the state line he was on.
By 1940, when this book was published, my folks had cleared out of there, but I still heard little speech mannerisms, which cultural geographers call “cultural artifacts”, that had embedded themselves and dropped into the speech of my elders back in the day.
Alpha, usually referred to in the first-person narrative as “Mother”, has married down. She fell in love with Brack many years ago, and although there was at least one wealthy man that set his cap for her, she chose Brack instead. And she doesn’t complain about the family’s state of poverty, not even when there is so little food that she pretends to eat while the children have their supper so that they won’t realize she is making a single mouthful last an entire meal. No, Brack is the one she wanted, and he is what she’s got. She’d do it again, she says.
But oh, how she wants to settle on a little spot of land! At one point they have rented a farm that is humble, yet provides enough food that they can winter over without fear of starvation. It’s on a hilltop with a view, and it has access to woods nearby where in spring, wild salad greens can be picked. It’s all she wants. That, and for Baby Green to survive. He’s been feeling poorly, crying from hunger. Finally, one ugly winter when the food has nearly run out, she apologetically takes a little more food at table. She is ashamed to do it, but she knows the baby needs milk, and it’s the only way she’ll be able to feed him.
She loves that baby so.
Just a plot of land where she can grow things and settle into the house without constantly being required to pick up and move to the next coal town, a mining town which might or might not be hiring, and where the air will clog the children’s lungs and coat the inside of the house with fine black grit, no matter how many used tobacco plugs are stuffed into its cracks. She is sure that if her little family takes care of the earth, it will take care of them. It worked for her mother, and it will work for her family too…if only she can persuade Brack.
And she can’t. Brack is a miner. He believes he was destined to mine coal. And wouldn’t it be nice if his many hanger-on relations, those that come to visit and never leave, felt inclined to do the same? Or to help turn the ground, when they have some to turn? Or to do something other than eat more than anybody else and complain that the food isn’t good enough?
The reader has to admit that this is a wicked-hard dilemma. If one’s relatives are likely to starve if turned out of the house midwinter with nowhere to go, can one send them? But if one’s children are going hungry because the relatives are eating a lot of the food that was supposed to be theirs, can one continue to feed them? It’s a point of contention between Mother and Father. Father says he won’t turn his kin out; Mother says the children are too thin and hungry, and couldn’t his kin do a lick of work for once?
At one point Grandma needs help, but Mother can’t go to her, because the baby is ill. The food supply problem and the Grandma problem are partially solved by sending our narrator and protagonist, still elementary school aged, off to live with her and help her run her farm. Grandma is the embodiment of a work ethic. Rheumatic and 78 years old, she crawls down the rows of crops in order to harvest a few puny potatoes. She reflects on her married life, before her husband died, and her pride in having none of them shot to death, so common in these nail-tough hills:
"Eight me and Boone brought into this world, and every one a wanted child. Four died young, and natural. Three boys and one girl we raised. My boys were a mite stubheaded, as growing ones air. But nary a son I had pleasured himself with shooting off guns, a-rim-recking at Hardin Town and in the camps, a-playing at cards and mixing in knife scrapes, traipsing thar and yon, weaving drunk. Nor they never drew blood for doing’s sake, as I’ve got knowing of. Feisty though, and ready to fight fair fist if the other feller wanted it that a way. I allus said, times come when a feller’s got to fight. Come that time let him strike hard where it’ll do most good, a-measuring stick with stone, best battler win. The devil can’t be fit lessen you use fire.
It occurred to me as I read it, although I could hear Grandma speak in that dialect in my head clear as day, that the dialect would wreck havoc upon the eyes and mind of someone with a mother tongue other than English. I handed it to my husband and pointed to a paragraph. He’s been in the USA for decades and speaks several languages, but he reluctantly told me that although he could understand it if I read it aloud with inflections where they belonged, it was really too much on the printed page.
With that sole caveat, I recommend this slim but magnificent story. The setting is nearly a character unto itself (although I had to get online to figure out what a paw-paw fruit was). The dialogue and its point and counterpoint, Mother advocating for the Earth, and Father advocating for dynamite and despoilment, is bound to resonate in this fragile ecological time.
But you could just read it because it is amazing literary fiction.
March 11, 2022
I've just been reading the series of books by Wendell Berry celebrating the bucolic, almost idyllic, life of a farming community in Kentucky, a large part of which occurs in the pre-WWII period. The farms are beautiful, the people fair, wise and well-spoke; the books are suffused with a nostalgic golden glow. River of Earth presents a different Kentucky of the same period, beautifully written by Mr. Still. These people are living on a subsistence live, scratching out a meager living on small plots of land, always threatened by adverse natural events and invading neighbors and relatives who have even less than they do. The men abandon their efforts at farming whenever jobs open at nearby coal mines; all well and good, except the jobs never last, and there are no crops to harvest when the mines shut down. It's a bleak picture, and Mr. Still tells it in at times impenetrable, but undoubtedly accurate, dialect of the period, as narrated by a seven year old boy--which only deepens the sense of despair which pervades the novel. The book is as much a historical documentary as it is a novel, which probably accounts for it being published by the University of Kentucky Press. I've read a number of other books set in early twentieth century Kentucky--for some reason it's a popular choice for authors, but this is one of the best and most affecting. If you've read and enjoyed Wendell Berry, you owe it to yourself to read River of Earth; it's like a dash of cold water in your face.
April 10, 2025
Mi è piaciuto proprio tanto!
La vita, molto grama, dei minatori nel Kentucky dei primi anni del '900, raccontata in prima persona dalla voce di un ragazzino. Babbo minatore legato alle aperture e chiusure delle miniere e all'incertezza del lavoro, mamma che vorrebbe tanto piantare radici da qualche parte e coltivarsi il suo orto, che da quello si ricava a sufficienza per campare, ma un minatore è un minatore non un contadino!; fratellini, zii bizzarri, parenti scrocconi, nonna, animali, campagna, descritta spesso con immagini vivide e poetiche (Quanti ragazzini, mi chiedo però, notano e ricordano questi particolari?): La mattina dopo era luminosa, l’aria ripulita dalla pioggia. L’intensa luce del sole cadeva radente sull’arido suolo calcareo dei monti, e la nostra casa sembrava accovacciata, scura e segnata dalle intemperie, sul pendio brullo. I picchi panciagialla scavavano i loro fori oblunghi nella betulla nera accanto alla casa, e di tanto in tanto becchettavano le prime gemme ancora chiuse. Prima di colazione, Fletch e io ci arrampicammo sull’albero e quando Mamma ci chiamò, ci avventammo affamati sulla nostra scodella di grano bollito. Una voce fresca e, tutto sommato, gioiosa, come è giusto che sia un ragazzino di quell'età nonostante tutto.
Ogni capitolo potrebbe essere un racconto a sé, scritto con una lingua colloquiale che nell'originale è la lingua dei monti Appalachi: nonostante la bravura del traduttore, chissà quali sfumature ci siamo persi!
La vita, molto grama, dei minatori nel Kentucky dei primi anni del '900, raccontata in prima persona dalla voce di un ragazzino. Babbo minatore legato alle aperture e chiusure delle miniere e all'incertezza del lavoro, mamma che vorrebbe tanto piantare radici da qualche parte e coltivarsi il suo orto, che da quello si ricava a sufficienza per campare, ma un minatore è un minatore non un contadino!; fratellini, zii bizzarri, parenti scrocconi, nonna, animali, campagna, descritta spesso con immagini vivide e poetiche (Quanti ragazzini, mi chiedo però, notano e ricordano questi particolari?): La mattina dopo era luminosa, l’aria ripulita dalla pioggia. L’intensa luce del sole cadeva radente sull’arido suolo calcareo dei monti, e la nostra casa sembrava accovacciata, scura e segnata dalle intemperie, sul pendio brullo. I picchi panciagialla scavavano i loro fori oblunghi nella betulla nera accanto alla casa, e di tanto in tanto becchettavano le prime gemme ancora chiuse. Prima di colazione, Fletch e io ci arrampicammo sull’albero e quando Mamma ci chiamò, ci avventammo affamati sulla nostra scodella di grano bollito. Una voce fresca e, tutto sommato, gioiosa, come è giusto che sia un ragazzino di quell'età nonostante tutto.
Ogni capitolo potrebbe essere un racconto a sé, scritto con una lingua colloquiale che nell'originale è la lingua dei monti Appalachi: nonostante la bravura del traduttore, chissà quali sfumature ci siamo persi!
December 11, 2020
This is a well-written book, though the "ending" could be a bit more robust. I enjoyed the characters, and the dialect wasn't a problem after a few pages.
I do have to say that the strongest impression I had upon completing the book was that it's a damn good thing that many women are able to chart their own lives now. (And we should be seriously pushing to help those who are not able/allowed to do so.) If the husband/father in this story had just listened to his wife, the family would have been much better off.
I do have to say that the strongest impression I had upon completing the book was that it's a damn good thing that many women are able to chart their own lives now. (And we should be seriously pushing to help those who are not able/allowed to do so.) If the husband/father in this story had just listened to his wife, the family would have been much better off.
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September 3, 2020Perhaps the greatest novel about Kentucky. In spare poetic prose Still depicts, through the eyes of a boy, the stark movement from hardscrabble agrarian life to the coal camps of Eastern Kentucky. I met Still in his cabin once and he left an indelible impression.
September 25, 2024
Really did not enjoy this book. If it wasnt for having to read it for class definitly wouldnt have finished.
October 18, 2021
Incredible voice and imagery, beautiful writing, terrific storytelling
September 5, 2013
Since I don't seem to be able to get enough of books set in the Appalachian region and since this 1940 novel seems to make an appearance on most best Appalachian literature lists, this seemed like a match made in heaven. I did like the book and parts of the writing were spare and beautiful, like the description of the simple act of lighting an oil lamp in the mountain cabin: "The flame ate slowly around the cold wick. It coughed, and a thread of smoke went through the chimney. It sucked the oil upward, out of the clear bowl. The flame grew, it spread daywhite, opening its wings like a moth. The shadows leapt back, under the beds, behind the meatbox."
The story is told from the point of view of a seven year old boy and describes three years of his life in the mountains and coal camps of Kentucky. It is a meager existence, with hunger ever present. The tension of the novel comes between his father's chosen path as a coal miner, following the camps that offer mostly below subsistence level work, and his mother's love of the farmland in the mountains and simple desire to stay put in one place and raise enough food to feed her family. And to stay by the grave of her baby.
Uncle Jolly is one of the most memorable characters - with his family loyalty side and his free spirit young man side playing against each other.
This seems to paint a true picture of the life on the mountain after the coal companies lured people off their land and into the traps of the company owned store and the dark underground mines.
The story is told from the point of view of a seven year old boy and describes three years of his life in the mountains and coal camps of Kentucky. It is a meager existence, with hunger ever present. The tension of the novel comes between his father's chosen path as a coal miner, following the camps that offer mostly below subsistence level work, and his mother's love of the farmland in the mountains and simple desire to stay put in one place and raise enough food to feed her family. And to stay by the grave of her baby.
Uncle Jolly is one of the most memorable characters - with his family loyalty side and his free spirit young man side playing against each other.
This seems to paint a true picture of the life on the mountain after the coal companies lured people off their land and into the traps of the company owned store and the dark underground mines.
November 19, 2016
The first chapter of the book alone (along with many others, honestly) would make an excellent stand-alone short story to introduce Appalachian regional literature to high school or college students.
A beautiful companion to Grapes of Wrath and a darker version of the first third of To Kill a Mockingbird, River of Earth is spellbinding--if you don't mind a slice of life, episodic novel rather than a linear plot. Grapes of Wrath is a stark modernist look at a family on the move in the west during the Great Depression; River of Earth focuses on a family who stays in one spot. Showing the plight and beauty of rural, coal-mining Appalachia during this period, it balances poetic descriptions of the people and landscape with the brutal and unforgiving realities they lived in, all from the perspective of a child protagonist. Every chapter seems to end with tragedy or violence, and yet River of Earth never takes on the depressed modernist mindset of "something is wrong here"--because these people never expected life to be any different from what they got.
A beautiful companion to Grapes of Wrath and a darker version of the first third of To Kill a Mockingbird, River of Earth is spellbinding--if you don't mind a slice of life, episodic novel rather than a linear plot. Grapes of Wrath is a stark modernist look at a family on the move in the west during the Great Depression; River of Earth focuses on a family who stays in one spot. Showing the plight and beauty of rural, coal-mining Appalachia during this period, it balances poetic descriptions of the people and landscape with the brutal and unforgiving realities they lived in, all from the perspective of a child protagonist. Every chapter seems to end with tragedy or violence, and yet River of Earth never takes on the depressed modernist mindset of "something is wrong here"--because these people never expected life to be any different from what they got.
June 15, 2020
I decided to take an Appalachian Studies class this summer in order to take a different class, as my university requires that we take at least two classes during a summer semester in order to receive money from scholarships.
Thus, I ended up reading this entire book in about the span of one day in order to have the knowledge for a quiz I had the next day. Now, perhaps it's fair to say that I didn't fully absorb this novel, considering the speed and disinterest with which I read it, but I think it might just be bad.
Now, novels like this have intrinsic value due to their historical relevance, but beyond that, it's a bit boring and repetitive and, worst of all, empty. I think it says a lot about its quality that I could barely describe its plot after reading, or that I had to look up the book in order to find the answer to the one quiz question I was given on the entire novel.
Reading this book is similar to being ranted at by an older relative you don't particularly like, and that's pretty damning in my book.
Thus, I ended up reading this entire book in about the span of one day in order to have the knowledge for a quiz I had the next day. Now, perhaps it's fair to say that I didn't fully absorb this novel, considering the speed and disinterest with which I read it, but I think it might just be bad.
Now, novels like this have intrinsic value due to their historical relevance, but beyond that, it's a bit boring and repetitive and, worst of all, empty. I think it says a lot about its quality that I could barely describe its plot after reading, or that I had to look up the book in order to find the answer to the one quiz question I was given on the entire novel.
Reading this book is similar to being ranted at by an older relative you don't particularly like, and that's pretty damning in my book.
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