The Contributions of Rebecca Caudill and Dorothy
Hoobler
To Appalachian Literature for Young Adults
Rebecca Caudill, born in l899 in Poor Fork, now
Cumberland, Kentucky, lived until l985 and devoted a major portion of her life
to writing young adult and children's literature. With the exception of Wind, Sand and Sky, a book of Haiku of the Arizona desert, Caudill's
books, numbering seventeen, are all set in Appalachia, each portraying
something of the life, the milieu, and the richness of the mountain culture and
its people. During a lecture
called, "The High Cost of Writing," given in l963 to students and
faculty of Southeast Community College in Cumberland, Kentucky, Rebecca Caudill
emphasized that "what life has said to an individual is the only thing he
has to write about that is worth writing about" (12). Her life in Appalachia spoke
consistently to her of the joys and anguishes of the mountain experience, and
her four young adult novels comprehensively convey many motifs "worth
writing about." Caudill's Tree of Freedom, The Far-off Land, Barrie and Daughter, and Susan Cornish capture four major characteristics of Appalachian culture, each worth writing about and
each worth examining more thoroughly in the waning years of Appalachian
culture. The first quality is
kindness, which encompasses tolerance of others and hospitality. The second is a kind of freedom which
implies independence, self-confidence, and the pride that supports necessary
and authentic self-esteem. Third,
Caudill consistently emphasizes, specifically in her strong female
protagonists, a moral code of integrity.
The fourth quality is the importance of education, the emphasis that
marked Caudill’s heritage from her parents who were teachers and was
confirmed in her return to Appalachia later in her life.
Many
of Caudill's novels are loosely autobiographical; her memoir, My Appalachia, delineates the positives and negatives aspects of
mountain culture.
Most
important were the people, unhurried, kind, independent,
determined,
with big families and close and loyal family ties.
Money
was of no importance in the life of anyone I knew. If
a
man was sick, womenfolks helped nurse him to health, while
the
menfolks tended to his planting, his plowing, his harvesting.
A
man was judged by what he was, never by what he had. Doors
in
the houses of my Appalachia were never locked against friend
or
stranger. The people found their
pleasures in the simple things
of
life. They possessed a kind of
profound wisdom, characteristic
of
those who live close to Nature, who walk in step with Nature's
rhythm,
and who depend on Nature for life itself.
( My Appalachia 28, 31)
This
rich description summarized Caudill's memories of her early years in
Appalachia. As she moved away from
the region for graduate work, and eventually settled in Urbana, Illinois,
Caudill did not experience firsthand the early years of the coal mining
exploitation of her Appalachia nor many of the negatives which affected
Appalachian life. In the 60's, she
and her husband, James Ayars, visited the region, interviewing people from a
range of occupations and involvements in the area, including Dr. W. D.
Weatherford. These interviews challenged Caudill to realize the problems that
dominated her homeland.
Weatherford, who had lived most of his ninety years in the mountains of
North Carolina, who had been a teacher, Methodist minister, Y.M.C.A. official,
and vice-president of Berea College, spoke of the three major problems he saw
in Appalachia. "The problem
that gives us the most trouble, because a lot of other things depend on it, is
the economic problem... If you don't have money, you can't have schools, you
can't have churches, you can't even have decent homes. I don't think it's the most important
problem, but it's basic" (My Appalachia 62). In
defining the economic problem, Weatherford spoke of state governments sitting
by as "the big boys" came into Kentucky and through the coal industry
literally stripped land and people; in North Carolina, it was the timber
industry; and in Georgia, it was various things (My Appalachia 62).
Weatherford
saw the second problem as ignorance.
His statistics from the l960's suggest that average educational level in
the region was "7.2 years" (My Appalachia 64). The
third major problem in the mountains Weatherford described as "a big one,
one of the very big ones" (64) stating, "We've got no sense of
community responsibility" (64).
Though the one-room school could encourage a sense of community
response, the small farms of the mountains did not require the kind of
organization that would draw people together. Once the economic conditions forced a dependency on county,
state or national funding and programs, a sense of individual pride and self-esteem
was lost, thus as the land was sapped of resources, the people of Appalachia
were equally sapped of life.
All
of these realities have informed the writings of Rebecca Caudill and make her
ripe for rediscovery as a voice authentically portraying the mountain
culture. This portrayal of Appalachian
culture, marked specifically by kindness which signals acceptance of others and
hospitality towards them, freedom with self-confidence and pride, a moral code
of integrity, and an emphasis on the importance of education, is a portrayal
apt to contemporary young adult readers who can meet in Caudill’s
characters, authentic role models.
Two
of Caudill's four young adult novels are historical and consistently highlight
the characteristic of freedom. Tree
of Freedom and The Far-Off Land are set in the late 1700's and focus primarily on the
westward movement of Scots-Irish to Kentucky and beyond the Appalachians. Tree of Freedom, which begins in l780, chronicles the move of the
Venable family, and the many others seeking the rich, then unclaimed land in
Kentucky. This land rush creates
one of the major conflicts in the novel: men devoting their energies to
obtaining land instead of fighting with the beleaguered troops of the
Continental army. Noel Venable,
the fifteen-year-old, eldest son who is too steeped in his maternal Tidewater
heritage and idealism to be eager about his father's persistent drive Westward,
voices the concern about owning land without the freedom of independence:
"Folks
are too busy scandalizin' the Continental Congress,"
he
said. "They're all tryin' to
get their hands on hard Spanish
money. They're grabbin' up Kentucky land while
it's cheap,
but
doin' precious little to keep it free.
Folks are too blind, Steffy,
and
too scared. They're a little
hexed, a lot of 'em are. And not
one
in
a hundred of 'em, I reckon, has ever thought what it'd be like
if
we win our chance. Or for that
matter, if we lose it." (Tree of Freedom 83)
Noel
is the only one in the Venable family who has learned how to read, though later
in the novel, Stephanie, Noel's confidant and supportive sister, will learn,
and she vows to become a teacher once communities have grown up around the land
her family claimed.
Caudill’s sense of the importance of education is evident
specifically in Noel’s and Stephanie’s treasuring of books and
reading. Noel’s ability to
read eventually saves his family as he can determine the unscrupulosity of the
land swindlers.
Stephanie
Venable, age l3, is the female protagonist of Tree of Freedom, who serves as the mediator between her father and
Noel, who consistently holds the family together, and exemplifies each of the
four characteristics that
dominate
Caudill's works. The aspect of
freedom is evident first in Stephanie's selection of the item she'll take with
her from the family's North Carolina home into the wilderness.
In
the smokehouse she broke the cobwebs that sealed a warped
old
calabash. Reaching her fingers
inside, she took one
solitary
apple seed of the many Bertha [her mother] had saved,
and
dropped in into the deerskin pouch that hung about her waist,
tracing
in her mind as she did so the long, strange journey of the
apples
through which the seed had come.
Bertha's Back Country
tree
had grown from seed she had saved from an apple that grew
on
Grandmammy Linney's tree in Charleston.
And Grandmammy
Linney,
when she was thirteen-year-old Marguerite de Monchard,
had
brought her seed from an apple that grew in the yard of her
old
home in France. The Trees of St.
Jean de Maurienne, they were called,
for the little French village from which Grandmammy came.
Stephanie,
hurrying back to the house, decided to keep her
reasons
for planting the seed a secret from every living soul
but
Noel. He would understand them,
she knew, because they
were
akin to the notion he was carrying in his head as he set out
for
the wilderness of Kentucky. (Tree of Freedom 25)
In
this novel, Caudill reveals the Appalachian culture against the backdrop of
freedom. She weaves several
conflicts, again with contemporary echoes: families against untamed wilderness;
a father, Jonathan Venable, against his torturous past that drives his
pragmatic, relentless pursuit of Kentucky farmland and independence; the same
father against his idealistic son (Noel selects for his one item to take on the
journey, the dulcimer he'd learned to play while in Charleston when staying
with his great-uncle Lucien, even though it means carrying the dulcimer on his
back into Kentucky); land grabbers and swindlers against those like the Venables
who have planted corn on the land as part of their claim; frustrated patriots
against colonists disgruntled by the British dominance in these early years of
the American Revolution; George Washington, George Rogers Clark, Francis Marion
and other leaders against the unwilling colonists who continue to slump in
their commitment to liberty; and a cast of individual characters like Lonesome
Tilly facing inner conflicts.
Lonesome
Tilly has the claim next to the Venables'. Tilly is a loner; some describe him as
"hexed." Caudill uses
the character of Tilly to voice several moral imperatives about human
relationships. As Stephanie and
Noel discuss the cause of people being hexed, they discover each person has
this potential.
"Know
what Uncle Lucien says?" asked Noel.
"He
says
it's bein' afraid that makes people hexed, that makes
'em
lose their bearin's. Everybody that's afraid's a little
bit
hexed, 'cause he's lost his bearin's just so much." (Tree of Freedom 75)
When
Stephanie asks Noel if he's afraid of meeting Lonesome Tilly, Noel continues
his insightful response.
"Shucks, naw, Steffy.
The more hexed a man is, if he ain't plumb daft, the more he hankers for
a little human kindness. If ever
you meet up with him, just say 'Howdy' natural like. Don't run away from him" (Tree of Freedom 76).
Caudill uses the concept of a person being “hexed”; again
contemporary readers can find parallels in the modern reaction to people who
are “different.”
A
final significant theme from Tree of Freedom highlights the cost of freedom. Stephanie reiterates in her explanation
to younger brother, Willie, that a tree of freedom is one "that grows
sometimes sweet apples, sometimes bitter ones" (T of F 91). She
learns as well that her efforts to secure freedom do not have to entail
physically joining the Revolutionary War.
Noel reminds her, "Servin' your country's mostly honest work...And
thinkin' ahead. You're doin' your
share to found new settlement in America, only you want to be on
your
guard like the de Monchards, not to make any deal with slavery of any
sort. There's lots of slavery,
Steffy, besides that you find in a black skin" (T of F 142).
The
Far-Off Land, the second historical
novel, even more emphatically develops the moral imperative of acceptance of
all human beings, particularly of Native Americans. This novel can be studied in tandem with Dorothy
Hoobler’s The Trail on Which They Wept. Figure One,
following this article, provides a guide for how Hoobler’s novel voicing
a young Cherokee woman’s experience during the Trail of Tears can be
paired with Caudill’s The Far-Off Land.
When the novel opens, it's l780. Ketturn Petrie, the novel’s protagonist, has been raised for eight years of her life by the Moravians, living in Salem, North Carolina. Anson Petrie, Ketty only living sibling whom she has not seen in over fourteen years, has discovered that his sister is with the Moravians. Anson does not know that after he left his North Carolina home in l764, following the allure of those pioneering into Kentucky, his parents and five of his six siblings died. As Ketty reveals the sad saga, she tells her brother how their mother treated every person as one of her own children.
"You'd
think, Anson, that when Mother had parted with six of
her
children, five deep in their bury holes and one gone off in
silence,
she'd have parted with her senses too.
But it seems like
sorrow
only tendered her heart till she looked on all people as her
children. She never turned anybody away from our
door hungry--
Tories
nor ragged militia nor Indians. Whoever tramped by asking
for
a bite of hoecake, Mother invited him to come in and sit at the
table
proper and eat. And she served every man of them just as if he
had
been you come home at last" (26)
Anson
cannot believe that his mother would have treated "red men, skulking
thieving red men" as he describes them, with such kindness. This very kindness proved to be the
shield that protected Ketty and her mother in every circumstance. In the face of Anson's driving
question, "And the red men--
they
never harmed you?", Ketty answers "They did mischief some
places. They stole horses and
killed cattle and robbed corn patches of roasting ears. But they never harmed us" (The
Far-Off Land 27).
Ketty
takes her Moravian training in acceptance and this sense of hospitality for
all, along with Moravian Sister Oesterlein's advice, on the pioneer journey
with her brother, his family and two other families traveling with them. As Ketty prepares to leave the Moravian
community, Sister Oesterlein counsels Ketty to "be present" and
"be reverent" (35) in all dealings with others, and once again
Caudill establishes the motif of moral integrity and hospitality toward
others.
"By
loving people, Ketty, you will come to understand
their
needs. By loving and caring about
people--all people.
See
people as we Moravians see them--not as friends or enemies,
but
as people, red people and black people as well as white,
Tories
as well as patriots, the gentleman's slave as well as the
gentleman. If love goes with you through the
wilderness,
Ketty,
you needn't be afraid. There isn't
any evil in the
world
that won't give ground before a loving woman." (The Far-Off Land 35)
This
advice given by Sister Oesterlein underlies all of the conflicts Ketty and her
companion pioneers encounter. This
novel is filled with the tensions of Anglo settlers invading the lands and
lives of Native Americans; of the dangers of mountain travels, untamed rivers
fraught with shoals, sawyers, "the Suck" and "the Boiling
Pot"; of the overwhelming fears experienced by Farrer, the young boy who
witnessed his parents being scalped; and the
fierce
persistence of Ketty not to surrender her ideals of treating all people with
kindness despite the relentless insistence of Anson that his sister learn to
shoot "red men." The
"Far-Off Land" suggested by the book's title symbolizes
the
universal of many different searchings.
As Ketty muses, "people are always trying to find some far-off
land--leaving behind the fields they've tended and the friends they love and
crossing ocean seas and climbing high mountains to get to it. How are we to know when we get to the
French Lick if it's the far-off land we're looking for?" (53)
At
the point when Ketty and Anson were reunited, she learned that Anson was
married and had two children; Ketty was particularly troubled to learn though,
that Anson's wife and children could not read. Feeling somewhat useless on the initial day of their river
journey into the wilderness, she decides to teach the six children on board how
to read. Ingeniously she creates
slates from birch bark and writing utensils from charred sticks. One of Ketty's major ways of "being
present," fulfilling her admonition from Sister Oesterlein, is to teach,
entertain, and divert the children during their river route into the
wilderness.
The
Petrie party is eventually joined by George Soelle, a surveyor. Soelle lends the male voice of reason
to the feverish land-driven Anson and his two male counterparts, Baptist and
Shubeal. Soelle also serves as
moral support for Ketty. In one
conversation following Anson and Baptist's bragging about an early Indian raid,
when they thought they'd successfully demolished the Native American
settlements along part of the river, Ketty expresses her anguish, "Why
won't white men listen to reason?" (142) George's words again articulate the challenge of moral
integrity.
"Because
they're land-greedy...They're always pushing west, and
in
the same way. First one ventures
out, a hunter or a trapper.
Then
other hunters come. They like the
lay of the land, so they
decide
to fetch their families and settle.
They cut down trees that
shelter
the wild game, and plant corn.
Their neighbors follow
and
take up claims of their own. And
nobody says by-your-leave to
the
red men. Usually by the time the
red men are roused up enough
to
protest, the white men have moved in in sufficient numbers to
raise
an army and drive the red men farther back. If they don't
win
the first ground, they win the second.
Then they call on the
government,
which they've left far behind to back them up,
to
make lawful what they've taken at rifle point. So the government
draws
up a treaty saying how much land the red men must cede
and
sends out a few bigwigs to parley with their chiefs. Sometimes the
government
goes through the motions of paying for the land, if you
can
call gunpowder and trinkets fair pay. (142-3)
From
this point in the novel, the parallels with Dorothy Hoobler's The Trail on
Which They Wept are all too clear,
and the pairing of texts (see Figure 1 and 2) provides a rich thematic unit
about the treatment of Native Americans in the century the United States was
settled.
Caudill
had learned from her father--both Caudill's parents were teachers--"What
you carry in your head, nobody can take from you" (My Appalachia, 28) and the theme of education dominates her other two
young adult novels: Susan Cornish
and Barrie and Daughter. Barrie and Daughter was Caudill's first novel. The book, set in the early twentieth century, highlights
more of the Appalachia Caudill experienced in her childhood. Caudill's father like Peter Barrie in
the novel, was a Democrat in eastern Kentucky, which like most of the Appalachian
sections of the Southern states was overwhelmingly Republican. Caudill saw her mother's tears and
distress on Election Day, a day Caudill describes "of drinking,
quarreling, shooting, feuding, and generally disturbing the peace" (My
Appalachia 2). In Barrie and Daughter the Election Day scene causes Blanche, Peter's wife,
even more agony than it brought Caudill's mother since in the novel Peter
Barrie has not only taken an unpopular political position, he has challenged
the Scollard brothers' lack of moral integrity.
Peter,
and his daughter Fern, who are described by Blanche as being gifted with the
sense to "distinguish clearly and quickly between what they considered
right and wrong, and never to allow the sun to go down on action
undecided" (Barrie and Daughter
41) decide to open a store, despite the fact that the Scollard brothers operate
the only other store in the valley, and the Scollards live adjacent to the
Barries. It is Peter's driving
sense of justice and integrity though, that causes him to open a store where
the people of the valley will not be cheated. While the usual life choices for women as Blanche so firmly
cautions Fern, the novel's protagonist, are marriage and keeping the home or
school teaching, Fern eagerly wants to become her father's partner in the
store. Peter has shared his
idealistic plan with Fern and counsels her:
"A
good store not only furnishes people with what they need.
It
can make them want better things than they have. It can help
them
live more comfortably than they do live.
It can give them more
satisfying
things to work with, and prettier things to look at while
they
work. If it does that for people
without robbing them, then
you're
right--it is a thing big enough to spend your life doing." (Barrie and
Daughter 44)
The
key sentiments in Peter's counsel are the goals of the good store helping
people live more comfortably than they do and giving people more satisfying
things with which to work. Clearly
too, there is the aesthetic component, "prettier things to look at while
they work"; each of these goals addresses the needs of the community and
through another venue, offers hospitality.
Throughout
the novel, Fern faces ridicule for being a woman storekeeper. In the face of mountain politics she's
told by her future fiance`, Clint Stacey, "Politics in these mountains is
stronger than any passel of facts you can quote to people. And you've got to be ready for lean and
dangerous times when people get busy at their politics and just naturally don't
know and don't care if their smokehouses are full or empty" (B. and D. 112). At
the same time, Clint remains her staunch supporter since he too, wants to do
something less than typical in his mountain community. When he shares with Fern his dreams of
becoming a doctor he emphasizes, "But it takes a lot of courage, Fern,
doesn't it, to do a thing everybody says you can't do, or that's just a waste
of time to do?" (B. and D.
228). Clint's plans to be a doctor
have grown specifically from his experience in the mountain community where
homegrown remedies has dominated medical treatment. With no disparagement to the natural wisdom of the mountain
people, Clint knows that the white swelling Fern's brother Tom had in his leg
when he was four, could have been treated differently. If it had, Tom, age fifteen at the
novel's opening, would not need to face all of life hampered by crutches.
Barrie
and Daughter delves deeply into the
moral fiber, that honesty and drive to live by principle, that the best of the
mountain culture nourishes despite the prevalence of violence. The Scollards, primarily driven by the
greed and corruption of John Scollard, attempt a series of sabotages of the
Barries' attempt to provide a store that fosters honest trade. Again Peter's wisdom provides both
shield and goad for Fern's courageous actions. Peter says in the face of John Scollard's violent action,
"'There may be other knives, daughter...You and I'll never own one. That ain't according to our way. But we won't run from them either. There are some things a knife can't
cut'"(B and D 51).
In
her decision to join her father's venture and to persevere in the face of the
demoralizing actions of the Scollards, Fern emerges as a courageous and ethical
woman. Her father reflects,
"She was going to be something far more splendid that the mere keeper of
the storehouse...far grander than a mere trader in food and clothing and
shelter. She was going to be a
mighty fighter on the side of the
people" (B and D 52).
A
quieter figure of the novel, Peter's wife Blanche, has to continually adjust to
the Quixotic visions of her husband and his plans for their daughter,
Fern. Blanche, no doubt created
loosely with Caudill's own mother in mind, is tempered by the realism of
election year vigilantism, but does not fear for her own safety. In her words to Peter who has shared
his plans for starting a store in the valley that will inevitably bring
conflict with the Scollards and all they are able to influence, she conveys
"an old, old weariness": "Nobody's a going to hurt me. Nobody's a going to hurt a woman
willfully" (B and D 68). For Fern, who has struggled to
understand her mother's stoic drive and tireless work ethic, a new
understanding arises.
Chivalry
toward women was part of the mountain code, in
feuds
as well as in friendships. Women
were never harmed.
But
more than one woman in the valley was widowed, Fern
realized,
and in more than one home children were fatherless
because
a man had seen fit to meddle in a neighbor's affairs,
by
criticizing or calling names or making dares and threats.
Yet
what such men had done was nothing compared to what
her
father proposed to do. (B and D 68-9)
Blanche
is also a champion of education, one of the qualities of mountain culture which
Caudill weaves throughout each of the novels: "'I'd as soon a child of
mine would be dishonest as to grow up without book learning'" (B and D 94). This
conviction Blanche shares with her husband and with those who seek the best in
mountain culture. Peter's strong
moral convictions are likewise grounded in education. The Democrat Peter wishes to support in the elections has
not been entirely fair and honest in the means he has chosen to right a
wrong. In this dilemma, Peter
responds:
"And
I don't care how bad a thing needs correcting,
if
you can't come out and correct it in the open, then the
medicine's
just as poisonous as the disease.
It takes education,
daughter,
to change a thing. Education. And education's a slow
thing. But it's an honest thing, and when it
gains ground with a
point
it's trying to make, it can just about hold that ground
against
anybody" (B and D 233).
Susan
Cornish is Caudill's novel whose main
conflict arises from the issue of education. The novel presents Caudill's strongest challenge to the
moral and economic torpor affecting the people of Pickwick Mill, a community
easily identifiable as representative of the broader Appalachian region. Susan, the novel's protagonist, has
chosen in her junior year not to return to the college her parents have
selected; the college's narrow perspective on learning cannot satisfy her
far-reaching questions.
"Can't
you see what I'm talking about, Daddy?...I wish I could make
you understand that--that something inside me is always
asking
questions and driving me to find answers.
I can't help it
if
they're hard questions, or if they're questions you're ashamed
to
ask. Like, 'What is God?' and,
'Are all men really created equal?'
and,
"Is white a superior color to black?' The thing that matters
is
that they're honest questions. But
nobody has ever faced my
questions
with me squarely." (Susan
Cornish 13)
Her
refusal to return to college precipitates her need for a job, and at eighteen,
Susan obtains a teaching position, deciding "to find out if a teacher
could be to a child what she had wanted her teachers to be to her" (Susan
Cornish 15).
Her
challenges in Pickwick Mill are monumental: the land is eroded; wealthy
landowners like Sam Goad, who has given Susan her position, can remove their
tenant farmers at whim and pay their poll tax so the tenants vote as the
"boss" wants; families are dissatisfied with the school and are
unmotivated to do anything for its improvement. Susan is told: "The old settlers did work together and
play together. But together they
wasted the wonderful loamy flesh of this elbow of land right down to the rocky
bone. They bequeathed a lot of gully-washed farms to their children, and
gully-washed farms won't nourish a community" (Susan Cornish 57).
Added
to these harsh realities, Susan learns quickly "that the essence of good
teaching was more than prodding children through textbooks. It was guiding and companioning
children in the realms into which their textbooks led. Teaching was more than knowing the
answers. It was being the answers,
deep within herself, to all the questions..." (Susan Cornish 21).
County
Superintendent Lawrence McAdam recognizes in Susan the honest searching,
tireless drive, and integrity that will make up for any inadequacies. He, and several other supporters,
provide the backdrop for her idealism.
Even when Susan feels as the speaker in Milton's "Lycidas"
that "the hungry sheep look up and are not fed," she is able to
awaken a new kind of energy in the community. Caudill creates in the novel as she has in the other young
adult novels, fictional characters who clearly achieve the answers to each of
the three major problems dominating post-l940's Appalachia: economic, lack of
education and lack of community responsibility. As the school at Pickwick Mill is rejuvenated, the community
reunites in the "coming together of people who had long gone their
separate ways" (S C 101).
This
novel identifies the roots of that which can most erode the ideals in mountain
communities. Susan examines the
roots in a conversation with Superintendent McAdam:
"I
want to go beyond teaching my children how
to
read and spell and multiply...I know these skills are
necessary
tools. But as far as I have been
able to
work
things out, the chief business of teaching, after
helping
the children learn is to--is to sick them on some
deep
yearning--the way you train a hound and then sick
him
on a fox. Maybe, Mr. McAdam, I'm
just an ignorant
girl
playing around with impossibly big ideas, but I do
have
a goal. I want these children to
make over Pickwick
Mill
into a living community, a place alive with vigor and hope,
where
people work together and play together and
worship
together the way they did in the old days." (SC 56-7)
Susan's
efforts to renew the community are slow and frequently thwarted; her experience
in facing the blight that saps the community is not a new one nor is it is
unique to mid-twentieth century.
She is told "The physical and the spiritual erosion in Pickwick
Mill didn't take place overnight, and overnight you aren't going to rebuild
what has been wasted" (SC
59). Caudill has created a story
of a woman who does assume the challenge; the novel reveals a cast of
characters true to mountain life and equally true to the spirit of renewal that
can triumph over torpor.
None
of these brief analyses can do justice to the wealth of Rebecca Caudill's
contributions to authentic voicing of Appalachian culture. In addition to the creation of
characters and conflicts so true to Appalachia, Caudill uses the mountain
variety of English, the foods, activities, and elements of nature native to
Appalachia for her comprehensive expose` of this region. Her writings serve the mountain people
well, but her works also speaks to the universals in human experience, thus
appealing to contemporary audiences from regions well beyond Appalachia. Her character of Lawrence McAdam, the
county superintendent in Susan Cornish identifies the human characteristics that apply to any region in any
age.
"Honesty
and truth and the other living essentials get
so
shoved around in this world, so mixed with mean little
sordid
little half-truths and with sheer triviality. Truth is
so
prostituted in most of our lives." (61)
It is another character, though, from Susan Cornish, Frank Burch, who indicates why the best of any region or people will ultimately triumph. And here we understand why the works of Caudill need to be rediscovered. As Burch puts it, "By speaking the truth in love...There isn't any meanness in the world that can stand up against the truth spoken in love" (180).