"On The Road: The Original Scroll" by Jack Kerouac, and Howard Cunnell, Editor

Although I have been an avid reader of the works of Jack Kerouac for many years, I had not been aware of the republication of his classic novel, "On The Road", in its original form as it was written on a long, continuous scroll of paper until I strayed into it in a Goodwill store recently. It had actually been published in this form in 2007 by Penguin Classics. Howard Cunnell served as the editor and wrote a rather pedantic introduction of 52 pages which begins the book. Howard Cunnell is an English writer, novelist, and literary critic who can be said to be a leading expert on Jack Kerouac and his work. But it is my considered opinion that he could have done a far better job of making his introduction more cogent and readable. A better discussion of Cunnell's work on Kerouac can be found at this link on the "Green Lantern Blog". The book also has three other essays of varying lengths which were written by Penny Vlagopoulos, George Mouratidis, and Joshua Kupetz. I am particluarly impressed by Ms. Vlagopoulous's essay which is much better organized and readable than Cunnell's. It also uses more discussion of the works of other writers to elucidate her points about the work of Kerouac. The multiple introductions cover the first 86 pages of the book. Dr. Penny Vlagopoulos is an associate professor of English at SaintLawrence University who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century literature. Dr. George Mouratidis is a professor at the University of Melbourne. Joshua Kupetz is a professor of English at the University of Michigan. All four of the academics involved in the preparation of this book can be said to be experts on the Beat writers. But I believe the effort would have been better served if one of them other than Howard Cunnell had served as the lead editor for the project. The original scroll version of "On The Road" had approximately 80,000 words deleted from it in the original published version from the original 1957 Viking edition. It would have been a cumbersome book to read, and even more difficult to turn into a best seller and eventual classic book in that original form. But for the devotee of Kerouac's work, it is a fascinating read. I was first exposed to the work of Jack Kerouac by my former professor, mentor, and friend, the late Robert "Bob" Snyder when he served as the creator and director of the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia, when I was a student there. Jack Kerouac never crosses my mind without being accompanied by Bob Snyder who also introduced me to the works of Mildred Haun and Francois Villon. That was an incredible threesome of writers to have learned of from one ever questing and questioining mind such as Bob Snyder had. I truly wish that Bob could have lived to read the original scroll which is reproduced in this book in an allegedly verbatim form. He would have loved it. It is well worth reading even if you are not a particularly devote fan of Kerouac and his work. The book contains a sizeable amount of sexual writing which was just a bit too racy for the average reader in the late 1950's. None of that deleted sexual writing is too racy to be in virtually any living writer's work today. Some personal references and usages of the actual names of a few of Kerouac's friends were also deleted from the 1957 version of the book in order to protect both the publisher, Viking, and Kerouac from possible legal entanglements. The book is a good means for the experienced reader of Kerouac to flesh out their knowledge base about the numerous beatniks who were his friends in both fiction and real life. For the average reader who has no experience with Kerouac's works, I would venture to say that this book is not the place to start your journey with Jack. Instead, you might read books such as "Visions Of Gerard" or "The Subterraneans" before venturing into this lenghthy portrait of the beatniks before they were known by that name.

Requiem For A Friend: Frank Barnett, Appalachian Heritage Bean Expert

Frank Barnett and I met about the spring of 2019 after our mutual friend, Bill Best, and I both published memoir pieces in a book called "True Christmas Stories From The Heart Of Appalachia" from the Jesse Stuart Foundation. We became close friends almost immediately based on a common set of interests and having grown up about 25 miles apart in Eastern Kentucky. I had been born and raised in Knott County, and Frank had been born and raised in Floyd County. Below is the official obituary which appeared on the website of the Littleton-Rue Funeral Home in Springfield, Ohio. Frank as been buried in Yellow Springs, Ohio. A more complete personal remembrance of Frank will be added to this post in a day or so due to my complex schedule. Frank Barnett, 78, of Georgetown, Kentucky, passed away at the University of Kentucky Hospital, Lexington on Wednesday afternoon, March 18, 2026. He was born in Martin, Kentucky on August 4, 1947, the son of the late James and Virginia (Ousley) Barnett. Frank was a proud graduate of Morehead State University and retired as a computer systems analyst. His true passion was found, after retirement, in preserving Appalachian heirloom seeds and stories. He was a lifelong learner, who enjoyed history, science, mathematics, gardening, and writing. He is survived by his daughter, Melinda Barnett-Reardon; sister, Mary Marguerite (Michael) Price; former son-in-law, Daniel Reardon; grandchildren, Abigail, Ella and Oliver Reardon; niece and nephew, Angela Nicklaus and Fred Nicklaus; and great nieces and nephew, Chelsea Gilmore, Celena Gilmore and Liam Gilmore. Frank’s funeral service will be held at 12:00 p.m. Friday, March 27, 2026 in the LITTLETON & RUE FUNERAL HOME. The family will receive friends beginning at 11:00 a.m. until the time of service. Burial will be in Glen Forest Cemetery, Yellow Springs.

Observations On "The Professor's House" by Willa Cather

Before reading this book, I had read almost nothing by Cather. It seems to me that most people who read a great deal still don't seem to be able to read everything by every author they wish they could have. With Cather's work, I find myself in that position.

The Pioneer Cemetery In Franklin, Pennsylvania

When I was an employee of a private, for profit program for juvenile offenders called Vision Quest, I spent a little over a year living and working in the little court house Pennsylvania town of Franklin, which is the county seat of Venango County, located about an hour north of Pittsburgh and about halfway between that city and Erie, Pennsylvania, on the shores of Lake Erie. During most of that time, I frequently supervised groups of juvenile clients who were allowed to do community service work in the surrounding town and county. One of my favorite parts of that job was to take a crew of three or four boys into Franklin to mow the grass at the Pioneer Cemetery. According to the Daughters of The American Revolution:

The Pioneer Cemetery was established in 1795 when the Borough of Franklin was established. It became known as 'The Old Graveyard Where Many Franklin Pioneers Were Laid to Rest'. For many years, the Franklin Pioneer Cemetery was forgotten. The monuments were broken, brush grew throughout and no interest was taken in this historical site. Then in 1955, the Venango Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution, took interest with the help of the Franklin City Council and many area citizens to make the site once again a beautiful Cemetery. The Pioneer Cemetery now is an asset to the City of Franklin and the County of Venango. Thousands of visitors from all parts of the country have taken time to visit and walk through this quiet spot to read and admire the beauty of the Cemetery. The first permanent settler of Franklin, George Power, is buried in Pioneer Cemetery. He was sent by George Washington to help build Fort Franklin. George Power returned in 1797 to make his home in Franklin. In addition there are three Revolutionary War veterans, nine War of 1812 veterans, and two Civil War veterans buried in the cemetery. Currently the Cemetery is maintained and funded primarily by the Venango County Chapter, DAR.

The Pioneer Cemetery is one of the most historic places I have ever been, and I am proud to say that I have particapted in the effort, for that one year, to keep it clean, neat, protected, and perpetual. I loved to walk around the cemetery and read the grave markers of all the historic and patriotic early Americans who are buried there. It was a beatutiful experience. The text below is a piece of writing I produced a few years ago about that experience but never submitted to the publication source I had in mind at the times. Over the rattle, roar, hum, of the lawnmowers and weedeaters, or was it beneath those sounds, I could have sworn I heard voices, maybe across the river, maybe down the street toward the courthouse, low, quiet, distant voices. As I moved across the fenced lot among the tombstones, occasional little American flags, local stones with engravings I had trouble reading now, the voices seemed to filter in, maybe being muffled by the surrounding trees, maybe across French Creek or somewhere along the Allegheny. Then, interspersed among the voices, I thought I heard the industrious strokes of a hammer, maybe John Broadfoot’s hammer building another house for a settler just arrived from farther east, Philadelphia, or even New York. That hammer kept working steadily but seemed to recede in the distance as another voice came through sounding a lot like I might have known John McLaurin’s voice would be, quietly insistent, encouraging us to keep working to “cherish their memories and keep their graves green”. The first time I stood in front of the gate to the Pioneer Cemetery and read the sign saying “First Burial in 1795” I knew I was in a special place, among historic people, people who would have remembered the stories of Fort Machault and how the French burned it to the ground in 1759 before retreating to Canada to leave America in the hands of the pioneers some of whom would be buried in that little plot on Otter Street. I walked inside and read the markers, slowly, one by one, moving from each to the next in awe of a group of people who had been brave and durable enough to come to the intersection of French Creek and the Allegheny to wrest the land from the French and nurture it until it became a quiet country town epitomizing the spirit of these people who had left England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales to come to a new, rough, rawboned land of mountains and rivers sitting in the way of the winds blowing off Lake Erie. These were people who included Lieutenant Francis Gordon, whose entire troop died in the loss of Fort Venango, and was burned at the stake after the fort was lost. This little town of little forts always outlasted the forts, the enemy forces who besieged them, the diseases which could not be cured, and the loneliness of living on what was in the late 18th century the western edge of civilization, the extreme limits of pioneer endurance until a few years later they sent their children farther west and often followed them taking that pioneer spirit to new places, new rivers, new forts, new adventures and dangers, moving, always moving, forever seeking more, more land, more freedom, more opportunities and always willing to engage in and win the fight necessary to seize the land and hold it against all comers.

This is the link which will lead you to the Pioneer Cemetery on Find A Grave. The photo below is of the grave marker of Revolutionary War soldier William Duffield (743-1827).

The photo below is of the grave marker of Revolutionary War Captain James Gordon Heron.

The Family Cemetery In Appalachia

The family cemetery in Appalachia has played an important role in social life, local history, and culture since Daniel Boone led the earliest settlers through the Cumberland Gap. The early settlers were coming into a country in which there were no roads, no white or European presence, and no prior history by their own kind of people. It was a rugged and dangerous environment. In a very short time, accidents, child birth, Indian warfare, and disease began to take their toll. Customs and sanitary norms of the time required that the dead be buried immediately. A certain percentage of those deaths took place even before the settlers were near an area where they intended to stay long term. In those cases, the dead were simply buried in the next available bit of ground where it was soft enough to dig. Many of those trail side graves have been lost for centuries. At times of Indian warfare, it was also not unknown for the settlers to make attempts to conceal the graves of their dead. They generally would have done this for two reasons: 1) to conceal losses of able bodied fighters from the enemy; and, 2) due to generally unfounded fears of desecration of the graves. But after settlers had found the piece of land they intended to call home, they buried their dead on their own land. A small piece of land would be chosen at the time the need first arose. The first grave would be dug and that spot would be designated the family cemetery for the Browns, or White's, or Hicks'. These first and most eventual graveyards in Appalachia were usually located on a piece of high ground, often with a good view of the surrounding area. It was often a favorite spot of the head of the household. There was also a common belief that on resurrection morning the dead in Christ would arise with the first rays of the morning sun. The higher elevations usually got morning sunshine earlier than low lying ground. It was also common for graves to be placed with the face of the dead toward the sunrise.

"The Patron Saint Of Ugly" by Marie Manilla

This is a review of a book by Marie Manilla of Huntington, West Virginia which I wrote about ten years ago for submission to a magazine which ultimately went defunct at about the same time. The review was never published. I had recently had a question from a reader who identifed herself as "Ms. Teacher" who teaches in WV and was looking for books to use in her classes to promote knowledge of the state and it's culture and people. I had responded to her comment with a question, among others, as to whether or not she has used the works of Marie Manilla in her classes. I was reviewing some old storage devices today and realized that I ought to post this review here since I have never actually written about this wonderful book on this blog. I unreservedly recommend this book for any teacher in Appalachia to consider as text material in high school literature classes. In fact, this book was chosen in 2021 for the West Virginia One Book One Read Project by the WV Culture Center. I also wrote an article which was published on the Mildred Haun Review Journal website about this book in comparison with a classic old Appalachian collection of short storys by Mildred Haun called "The Hawk's Done Gone". Haun's book is also a masterpiece of Appalachian fiction and contains some of the best Appalachian dialect writing I have ever seen.That article can be found at this link but it doesn't have a direct link to each article so you have to go to the link and scroll to page 10 to find it. Thanks for the effort in advance! I also recommend the West Virgiinia Culture Center unreservedly as a place to take students of any age in the school systems of Appalachia on a day trip. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Patron Saint of Ugly Marie Manilla New York: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin 2014 $13.95 (paperback, 334 pages) The Patron Saint of Ugly, Marie Manilla’s second novel and third published book is set in a dying fictional town called Sweetwater, WV. The protagonist is a young woman, Garnet Ferrari, who is being studied by the Vatican for possible sainthood due to her purported ability to heal those with afflictions which make them ugly to the rest of the world. Garnet is a member of an Italian American family whose members are just unique and noticeable enough to be my relatives or yours. Garnet’s body is covered with port wine birthmarks which constitute a map of the world and her personal cross to bear. The novel juxtaposes Catholics & Protestants, immigrants & native born, Irish & Italian, rich & poor, young & old, beautiful & ugly, Old & New Religion, and WV and the rest of the world. Manilla’s manner of dealing with these juxtapositions is reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor at her best. The novel won the Weatherford Award as best Appalachian Novel in 2015. The novel is presented as a series of audio tape transcriptions which Garnet is recording for the Vatican investigator sent to determine her legitimacy as a saint. They contain her autobiography and persistent denial of that sainthood as well as her deep seated desire to know that her Italian Catholic father loves her. Ms. Manilla leads us along a wonderfully wrought path from Sicily to Sweetwater that makes us all examine our own personal relationships, desires, ambitions, and flaws. Ms. Manilla’s rich sense of humor will give you a frequent chuckle and an occasional belly laugh along the way. While hundreds of supplicants travel to her door on Dagowop Hill in search of healing, Saint Garnet hides in her inherited mansion and seeks her own redemption from the highly personal demons which complicate her life along with her port wine map of the world. Along the way, Saint Garnet and the small circle of people who know, understand, and love her each suffer their own struggles. The novel introduces numerous characters all of us have known, or believe we knew. They are the familiars of all our lives, the loving and devoted grandmother, the struggling mother who deserves more, the despised and perverted cousin, the working class father who seeks to give a wonderful wife all she deserves, and the brilliant but misunderstood sibling. Ms. Manilla blends all these characters and themes into a wonderfully woven story which assists the reader in coming to self-knowledge and a fuller appreciation of her own flawed life and family. She also artfully kills off a few characters for the good of the story. For more than a hundred years, Appalachia and West Virginia have benefitted from the lives, works, and descendants of Italian American immigrants who came to perform the tasks which were too onerous or dangerous for those who persisted in the belief that they were too good, or smart, or rich, or valuable to perform those tasks. The Patron Saint of Ugly has now joined the ever growing list of such achievements from which we have all benefitted. Ms. Manilla utilizes skills learned in West Virginia and honed at the University of Iowa Creative Writing Program to create a masterful and memorable work which leaves the reader hoping for more from this group of characters and their creator. This book is a must read for the lover of Appalachia and Appalachian literature.

"Appalachian Folk Tales" Compiled and Edited By Loyal Jones

Loyal Jones was one of the small handful of individuals who created the field of Appalachian Studies during his lifetime. There were perhaps no aspects of Appalachian Culture which Loyal Jones could not disucss cogently and clearly on a moment's notice. But Appalachian Folk Tales was an area about which he produced only a small amount of writing despite being a well known public speaker on both Appalachian Folk Tales and Appalachian Humor. He also cowrote several books on Appalachian Humor with song writer and playwright Billy Edd Wheeler. But this little book of a mere 117 pages constitutes the majority of his work on the title topic. "Appalachian Folk Tales" was published by the Jesse Stuart Foundation in 2020 only three years before his death at 95. The book was marketed as an introductory text on the subject for grade school aged children to "...delight and inform the children of today". The roughly three page "Note To Parents And Teachers" which serves as an introduction or foreword to the book was dated by Loyal Jones as having been written in 2010. The book contains a total of twelve Appalachian Folk Tales as told by several of the prominent experts over the last half century or so. Two of the stories have Loyal Jones listed as their author although the tale "Mutsmeg" is described in his introduction to it as having been publicly told by at least four other leading experts on Appalachian Folk Tales including Cratis Williams and Leonard Roberts who were two of the most skilled in the genre. Loyal Jones' introduction to "Jack Goes a-Hunting" describes it as having been either told or written in both "...Old World and American folk tale collections". Every tale in this little book is worth hearing and remembering. Each of them is a shining example of the folk tales which have been told and passed down from generation to generation in Appalachia ever since Old World settlers first came to this country. This book can serve as an introduction to Appalachian Folk Tales for anyone interested in the subject at any age. It is a great place to start if you know little about the topic and want the base of your knowledge to be well grounded from the beginning. Enjoy it!

Loyal Jones Photograph Above Copyrighted by Roger D. Hicks

"Contemporary American Folk Artists" by Elinor Lander Horwitz

I have made two earlier posts either about or prompted by the books of Elinor Lander Horwitz who published several books on the subjects of Appalachian Folk Art and/or American Folk Art. Elinor Lander Horwitz, who wrote numerous books on several topics, spent a great deal of time in the 1970's traveling across the United States with her two sons who were both highly skilled photographers meeting, interviewing, and photographing American Folk Artists and their works. I assume also that based on the depth and breadth of her interest in and knowledge about folk art Elinor Lander Horwitz must have owned a large collection of folk art. The book which is the subject of this blog post has individual chapters about 10 folk painters, 6 folk wood carvers, and 6 individuals whom she described as "total environmentalists". A blogger named Jim Linderman has also blogged about Horwitz and this book. The amount of work, time, travel, and expenditures which went into the creation of Horwitz's books about American and Appalachian Folk Art was very extensive and no doubt expensive. The book has 143 pages, 22 chapters each of which profiles a single folk artist. Every one of these people was a unique creator in a greater world of folk art which is also quite unique in both the singular and plural manifestations. Due to the period in which the book was researched, written, and published,the 1970's, I suspect that all, or nearly all of the artists profiled are now dead. I will briefly describe what this book has taught me about a few of them whom I consider the most interesting although I have to admit that I would have loved to have known them all. One or two, maybe less than a handful of the artists, may well have been deceased before Horwitz wrote the book. Sister Gertrude Morgan was an African American Folk Artist and street preacher in New Orleans. Clementine Hunter was also an African American Folk artist who spent her life as a servant on Melrose Plantation in central Louisiana. At the plantation, this illiterate African American cook was exposed to the French painter Francois Mignon and his work, and stated she thought she could "mark a painting" too. After seeing one or more of her unique works of African American life in the early twentieth century, Mignon began to mentor her and provide her with paints and other materials. It is possible today that she is now more famous than her mentor. Hattie Bruner was a Caucasian antique dealer in Pennsylvania Dutch country who grew up poor and only became a painter in her late sixties. She painted wonderful pictures of life in the country side around where she had grown up in an older, more quaint time. Miles Carpenter in Western Virginia was a seller of watermelons and other produce who bacan carving and selling wooden copies of his melons and then branched out to other subject matter for the rest of his life. Edward Ambrose was a Virginia carpenter who developed a sideline of carving small objects of all kinds and then creating much larger tableau of them such as country stores, blacksmith shops, and a duck decoy maker's workshop. In Yorktown, Virginia, Walter Flax was a socially isolated African American man who had desired to go to sea but lived his entire life without ever seeing the ocean and spent years decorating the property on which he lived with his ships made of whatever salvaged materials he could find in the area around his two room shack. Perhaps the most unique of these folk artists was Creek Charlie, Charlie Fields, who lived in a house which he covered with multicolored polka dots and filled with numerous polka dot painted objects in every inch of his residence. On Sundays, he welcomed anyone who wished to visit him to come to his home for conversation and friendship. His little polka dotted farm house is the cover photo of Horwitz's book. Jim Colclough was a Californian whose home was taken by the highway department under eminent domain which caused him to begin to protest the government via his folk art constructions of often animated figures carved from wood and equipped with cranks or other devices to cause them to move in unique ways. His probable favorite of these constructions was of two men, one of whom represented the government of California, and the other who represented others such as Colclough who had been adversely affected by government actions. When the crank is turned to animate the piece the representation of the state of California holding the representation of the victims of the state shakes that figure up and down to shake him loose from his money and/or property. The title of that piece is "Helping Man Decide Sell Home for Highway". I have to say that Colclough is probably my favorite of all the artists who are subjects of the book. This is a wonderful book to read and learn about more than 20 of the prominent American Folk Artists of the early to middle twentieth century. It can usually be found on most internet based used book websites. You will enjoy getting to know these unique and uniquely productive Americans.

Appalachian Folk Art and Mental Illness: Is There Any Correlation?

"An Appalachian Eulogy" by B. Camp

The author of this book is actually Dr. Dennis Campbell, M. D. who chose to publish under a pen name despite having also chosen, at some point, to make no secret of his real identity. Dr. Campbell and I worked together in both our previous careers. He is a retired psychiatrist and I am a retired mental health and addictions therapist. We worked together for about 3/12 years in a community mental health facility in a small county in Eastern Kentucky. We also grew up in the same equally small county about fifty miles from where we actually met at work. We have remained as friends ever since working together. Dr. Campbell has now written and published somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen fiction books in several different categories and all are available on Amazon under the pen name B. Camp. I have previously written on this blog about two of his other books, "Tales From The Red River Gorge" which he cowrote with his wife who writes under the pen name Maribeth Wagner, and "Aaron Subject Number Seven". "An Appalachian Eulogy" is the most purely Appalachian book of the three in my opinion, although both of the others have settings and some characters who are Appalachian. "An Appalachian Eulogy" begins about 1825 and ends about 1975. It tells a story of a blended family in which the parents Able and Elizabeth Horn who have one biological daughter, Emily. As the book begins, their nephew Zeke is in East Tennessee living with an unrelated family who have taken him in after his parents and only brother have died of a plague. This family has written a letter who the Horns who are the brother and sister-in-law of Zeke's father. Able travels to East Tennessee in the late winter to early spring and brings Zeke back to his home which is a hillside farm on Beaver Creek in Knott County Kentucky which happens to be the creek on which I grew up. While some of the place names in the book are fictitious, most of them are actual place names still in use today in the area of the novel. The place on Beaver Creek where the Horn farm is located is about 3 or 4 miles from where I grew up. On their way to Beaver Creek from East Tennessee, they stop in a town in Tennessee for more supplies for their horseback trip and Zeke is allowed to spend some time alone seeing the sights of the town. He strays into a scene in which a group of boys are harrassing a young homeless orphan girl and rescues her from their attack. Able agrees to take the girl, Emma, along with them to his home if the local authorities agree to it. He finds the Tennessee sheriff who allows him to do just that. The three then complete the trip to Beaver Creek where both Zeke and Emma become members of the Horn family. Emma who can't remember the last name of her parents assumes the Horn name which, as odd as it might sound in today's world, was not an uncommon event in the early 19th century in the Appalachian Mountains. It was fairly common at that time for kindly, or soemetimes unkindly, non-relatives to informally adopt orphans and raise them under the family name. The three children, one biological and two informally adopted, quickly become known simply as a family, the Horn family. They live a lifestyle which was common on hillside farms in Eastern Kentucky in that time frame and learn all the chores and requirements of living a self sufficient life in the mountains. Zeke grows up to be a bright, ambitious young man and attends Alice Lloyds, Caney Creek Community Center until he graduates from high school. He then matriculates to Caney Junior College on the same campus and now known as Alice Lloyd College. Eventually, the adopted daughter Emily leaves home to marry a coal miner and live an itinerant life with her growing family in a number of mountain coal camp towns. She dies young and leaves a letter in a family Bible directing her daughter to keep it unopened until she locates another member of the Horn family from whom she has become lost due to her multiple moves from coal camp to coal camp. I won't spoil the ending. You can find the book on Amazon. If you are a fan of Appalachian fiction, the book is worth reading.

"The Temptation: Edgar Tolson And The Genesis Of Twentieth Century Folk Art" by Julia S. Ardery

Rarely, if ever, have I seen a book which is so meticulously researched, documented, and written. This book by Julia S. Ardery is a masterpiece and one of the most important books in the field of Appalachian Folk Art. The only potential negative in the book is the fact that it is so well written that it can become a bit pedantic at times. But if one chooses to read books written by a potential pedant, this is the book to read. It is based on the well justified premise that Campton, Kentucky, folk artist Edgar Tolson was largely responsible for the popularity of Appalachian Folk Art and, in some ways, the increased popularity of American Folk Art in general. It is also fascinating that the book was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1998 more than 22 years after the death of the author. That fact is a clear indicator that it must have been preserved in manuscript form by her son Major General Phillip P. Ardery who was her sole surviving child at the time the book was published. Julia Ardery was also the editor of another book, "Welcome The Traveler Home" which is the memoir of Jim Garland, a career union organizer. That book was also published after the death of Julia Ardery by the University of Kentucky Press. Edgar Tolson was an enigmatic, garrulous, and sometimes abrasive man whose eventual fame might not have been foreseen in a person who fluctuated between periods of preaching and excessive drinking. He is even credited with once having blown up the little church he preached in with dynamite. But he gained many supporters, promoters, and fans as he moved from a life of itinerant labor to become the premier wood carver in America in his lifetime. He was obviously well respected by Ardery who spent a vast amount of time and resources to compile this book which is sourced with numerous interviews by the author with more than 60 people other than her primary subject. She also did an excellent piece of work in detailing the lengthy relationship between Edgar Tolson and Scuptor and educator Michael D. Hall who promoted Edgar Tolson's work tirelessly, collected large numbers of his carvings, and eventually was able to sell his entire folk art collection to the Milwaukee Art Museum which has an entire wall in one room which is dedicated to Edgar Tolson's carvings of the biblical story of Adam, Eve, and their sons, Cain and Able. Ardery goes to extensive and well justified lengths to discuss how Edgar Tolson's growing popularity in the world of "real art" enabled many other folk artists, both Appalachian and American, to sell their works, gain credibility in the art world, and in some cases to actually make a living from what had previously been known more often as "whittling", "fooling around", or "wasting time". This is a truly beautiful piece of work with numerous photograpns of Edgar Tolson, his art works, his family, and others. The research for this book is some of the best I have ever seen on any topic. If you are a person who enjoys reading a well written, extensivley researched, and flawlessly documented work, this is the book for you whether or not you are already an admirer of good folk art. It is actually capable of inducing you to become another of the aforementioned admirers and collectors of folk art. The book is widely available on most used book websites and well worth reading.

"Aaron Subject Number Seven" by B. Camp & Maribeth Wagner

The authors of this book are actually Dr. Dennis Campbell, M. D., and his wife who chose to publish under pen names despite having also chosen, at some point, to make no secret of their real identities. Dr. Campbell and I worked together in both our previous careers. He is a retired psychiatrist and I am a retired mental health and addictions therapist. We worked together for about 3/12 years in a community mental health facility in a small county in Eastern Kentucky. We also grew up in the same equally small county about fifty miles from where we actually met at work. We have remained as friends ever since. Dr. Campbell has now written and published somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen fiction books in several different categories and all are available on Amazon under the pen name B. Camp. This book is actually part of a series of novels which can be bought separately or in a compilation of the lot of the them in one volume. The title character in this book is Aaron, a young boy who is one of a sizeable number of subjects in a dystopian research project by a nefarious and somewhat murkily described company known as The Conglomerate. The company has set out on a mission to genetically engineer a group of superhumans for some murky, but destructive, mission in the future. The subjects are the biological children of carefully chosen men and women whose mental and physical capabilities are well above those of the average human. But the children have also been genetically altered to increase all their physical and mental assets, raised in a deeply secretive group of corporate locations, and taught and trained in a manner to multiply their abilities. Aaron is stolen or rescued by a couple who are both employees of the company at about the age of 8 or 9, and transported to a secretive property which they own in Knott County Kentucky (the county where Dr. Campbell and I grew up). The family which has been created by this removal of Aaron from the company now go totally off the grid, and out of the easy access of the company. The father in this family is a retired Navy Seal and works to train Aaron in much the same way he would have trained a future seal. His wife is an educator and also feeds Aaron's superhuman intellect with a knowledge base which covers the length and breadth of human knowledge and experience. He progresses rapidly, almost too rapidly to be believed, and at the age of thirteen can be mistaken for a well developed adult male with the intellectual and military skills to be a formidable enemy to anyone or anything he wishes to destroy. His quasi-parents have also managed, with their exceptional computer skills, to divert and hide massive amounts of money from the company's bank accounts prior to thier disappearance with Aaron. Aaron sets out at the age of thirteen posing as an adult male to wage a well planned and effective war against the company. I won't spoil the ending for you. If you are a fan of dystopian fiction, you are likely to enjoy this book. If you ask me if I believe that such an effort could be underway in the world today, I would be forced to say that I do believe it is possible. It is even possible in more than one country, location, or setting. I do believe that the Russian or Chinese military could be doing such a thing today. I also believe that any one of a sizeable group of the ultrawealthy such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and perhaps a dozen others of those ultrarich are both financially capable of this type of attack on humanity, and several of them, especially Musk, are also morally destitute enough to try to build such a force and use it in an attempt to control the world. Megalomania is both present in some of these people, and so is their self aggrandizing psycholocal makeup such that they could be doing this very thing even as we discuss it.

"Michael Hall: Three Installations", by Michael Hall

Michael Hall is an American Sculptor who previously taught at the University of Kentucky and left that position to take up a residency at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. This book is an exhibition catalogue for three major outdoor installations which he created in 1977. They were titled Brahma, Stockton, and Drifter. The catalogue is only 38 pages but contains a large assortmenf of photographs of the three installations, Hall, and one piece by Appalachian Wood Carver Edgar Tolson. My interest in Hall came about because of my major interest in Appalachian Folk Art and my extensive connection to Edgar Tolson's son Donny Tolson who was also a major Appalachian Wood Carve in his own right. But Hall's work is fascinating and worthy of attention from any lover of good art, especially large sculptural works. The book also contains essays written by Michael Hall; Frederick J. Cummings, Director of The Detroit Institute of Arts in 1977 when the installations were created; John Hallmark Neff, Curator of Modern Art at the Detroit Institute in 1977; Mary Jane Jacob, Assistant Curator of Modern Art at the Detroit Institute; Robert Pincus-Witten who was an American Art Critic, Curator, and Historian at the time. I have never seen the installations discussed in the catalogue, and honestly do not know at this time if they are still extant. Such large pieces of sculpture are often victims of urban renewal projects, industrial or housing developments, or even highway construction at times. Hall was a well respected scuptor and art educator and his work was popular among supporters of Modern American Art. If I find myself in the Detroit or Bloomfield Hills environs, I can assure you that I will seek out the full story of these three works. But my major interest in Michael Hall will always be his work in support of Appalachian Folk Art and Folk Artists, especially Edgarand Donny Tolson. Hall, during his tenure at the Univerity of Kentucky became an afficianado, collector, and major supporter of Appalachian Folk Art. His and his wife's collection of Appalachian Folk Art now resides in the Milwaukee Art Museum, and I am proud to say that I have seen those pieces from the Hall collection which are on display there including several pieces by Edgar Tolson. They are well worth seeing for any supporter of Appalachian Folk Art, American Folk Art, or simply the greater world of art in general.

"Fifty Best American Short Stories", Edited by Martha Foley

I love short stories, and I consider the short story to be the best form of all writing in literature. It has almost no room for error. Even the simplest little changes can either make a short story truly great or turn a potentially great short story into something very ordinary. I have read and studied the short story form ever since my high school days which were a mighty long time ago. I also write and have published about 20 short stories in at least 12 states in a variety of both college and university literary journals and some of the better online websites. I published my first short story in my twenties. But I don't pretend to be an expert on the short story, and I surely don't pretend to be a great short story writer. I do profess to be a good short story writer, and I believe the significant number of editors and/or editorial committees who have accepted and published my stories is some level of proof of their agreement with me about my self assessment. The best way to become a good to great short story writer is to read stories by the authors whom other people who understand the short story believe to be the best in the world. Everyone has their own opinion of what a great short story is, and there is room for some disagreement since the idea of stating what is a good to great short story is very subjective. It should also be very objective and sometimes editors are more subjective than objective. I remember one story I submitted to a book project in Texas, as I recall, and I got a handwritten rejection from the editor who had rejected it which said something to the effect that "This story really doesn't fit our project goals, but it sure is an interesting story." Did that editor mean that "interesting" was a good thing or something less. Since he bothered to send me a handwritten rejection, I assume he liked the story. You never know in a case like that. But to get to the point of this blog post, I am actually supposed to be writing about the book of stories which I recently finished by reading one stor a day from the book with my wife. This particular book, "Fifty Best American Short Stories" Edited By Martha Foley, was published in 1986 and contains stories from 1915 to 1964. It contains short stories from several of my favorite authors although the stories the editor chose are sometimes not my favorite stories by a particular author. It also contains some stories from people whom I had never read who might not make anyone's top ten or top fifty list of short story authors which speaks to that subjectivity of which I spoke earlier. But it is overall a very good book of short stories and well worth reading. The authors in this collection whom I had already placed on my list of favorites includes Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Ray Bradbury, Flannery O'Connor, and Shirley Jackson. Interestingly, the editor did not include the story I consider to be each of those writers' best. She might have been bowing to copyright restrictions on what she considered their best but included another story from each of them in a bow to what she considers their overall greatness. Or maybe we just have differing opinions, hence subjectivity rears its head. If you can find a copy of this old collection, buy it, read it, and make up your own mind while trying to be totally objective about the process.

"Kinfolks: The Wigus Stories" by Gurney Norman

A recent reread of this book was, naturally, prompted by the death of its author, Gurney Norman, who is most famous for his first novel, "Divine Right's Trip: A Novel of The Counter Culture" which I had reread and written about earlier this year. I honestly don't remember the first time I read this collection of short stories. It is composed of a collection of ten short stories which have a cast of common characters who are all either family or friends of the protagonistg, Wilgus Collier, an Appalachian male who is raised in the home of his maternal grandparents. I believe all but one of the stories had been previously published in several literary journals around the country. In some respects, an argument could be made that it is a similar kind of collection to Mildred Hauns's "The Hawk's Done Gone". However, this collection falls a bit short of Haun's book in being a major part of the argument about what actually constitutes a novel versus a collection of short stories with a common setting and a common cast of characters. Norman's book and the stories it is comprised of is less tightly timelined across the lives of the characters, and falls a bit short in the depth of the character development of most of the characters as opposed to Haun's work. Enough about that. The protagonist is a member of a family which has a complicated structure and mercurial interactions. He is the grandson living in the home of his grandparents, is a close friend of his slightly older uncle Delmer who teaches him how to drink among other acts of coming of age. This book is generally perceived a series of coming of age stories and spans the boys adolescent years to his young adulthood. He is better educated than the other family members and is often viewed as a source of assistance when family problems arrives. One of the stories is about the illness of the grandfather and Wilgus' spending a night sitting with him in hospital. A similar incident with different characters is also a significant part of "Divine Right's Trip" in which D. R. the protagonist in that book performs the same chore for a family friend. The family fight often, love each other always, and show it clearly when the chips are down. They might fight each other in private but they always fight common enemies in public. These stories will make you laugh, and make you cry. They will make you a fan of Wilgus and his extended family. I sincerely doubt that any of these stories will be forever enshrined into the pantheon of great American Literature. But they are already enshrined in the pantheon of serious Appalachian Literature. This book is well worth reading especially if you are a devotee of the American short story.

"Memoirs of a Geisha", Rereading A Classic Novel

My initial reading of this book took place about 2003, about 6 years after the book was originally published. I chose to reread it with my wife because we had both loved it when we read it the first time. On second reading, the book is just as great as I had viewed it over 20 years ago. It is written by the author, Arthur Golden, as a memoir in the first person with the narrator being the protagonist, Sayuri, a poor young Japanese girl who has been sold, along with her older sister, by her father after the death of her mother to a leading man in their poor seaside fishing village in rural Japan. The buyer immediately sells her to the owner of an okiya in the large city of Gion to be used as a maid initially, but ultimately to be trained as a geisha. The dictionary definition of a geisa is "A Japanese girl or woman who is trained to entertain professional or social gatherings of men with conversation, dancing, and singing". That simplistic definition is a bit short of reality. The girls who are being trained to become geisha are nothing short of slaves, property, belonging to the female owners of the okiyas into which they have been placed. An okiya is a house which is run by an older woman, sometimes a retired former geisha, In the house, this owner will have at least one and sometimes more geisha whose work supports the entire household which is composed of the owner, perhaps an assistant or two who may also be former retired geisha, one or sometimes more young apprentice geisha, and several support staff who function primarly as maids, cooks, and errand girls. Often the maids are young girls who are being considered for training as geisha when they are older. There is a complete culture represented by the geisha, the other members of their okiyas, and their customers who are usually well to do men some of whom may even be among the richest in the country. This culture is thoroughly represented by Arthur Golden in the book and he actually trained in college to become an expert on Japanese culture and language. Incidentally, this is his only published book so far as I know, and that is a tragedy. This novel is classic and was a massive best seller when it was first published. In the okiya to which Sayuri has been sold, the primary geisha is a woman named Hatsumomo who is one of the best known and highest earning geisha in Japan. But she is a foul tempered, manipulative, and totally unlikeable woman who is the villian of the book. She does all she can to prevent Sayuri from ever becoming a geisha by lying, manipulating all those around her, and working on a daily basis to destroy the life, hopes, and dreams of Sayuri. But since she is the primary wage earner in the okiya,she is the one person on whom all the others in the house are dependent. Sayuri manages to meet and become befriended by another geisha, Mameha, who takes her under her protection and assists her in succeeding to become a full fledged geisha. Very early in the book, Sayuri meets only briefly a man referred to as The Chairman, who owns one of the largest companies in Japan, and she falls in love with him. But due to the strict social protocols of Japanese culture,she cannot make her feelings about him known. She does find steady work entertaining the Chairman over time along with his right hand man who is a former war hero who has lost an arm and been severely burned during the war. But he is compassionate despite being gruff, brusque, and overly honest in his criticisms of those around him. He and Sayuri become close friends and he wishes to become her danna, a Japanese expression for a man who provides for a geisha without ever marrying her. That relationship never happens and Sayuri near the end of the book takes actions to ensure that she doesn't ever become the beneficiary of his assitance. This is a powerful novel which provides a lenghthy ongoing portrait of live in Japan both for geisha and all those around them in the years leading up to War War II and beyond. Sayuri suffers hardships both as a child and as a geisha especialy during the war. But in the end she has become an independent woman in control of her own life and circumstances. It is one of the finest novels I have ever read about life in Asia in general and in Japan in particular. It can be found on any used book page on the internet and is still in print. Read it! You will love it!

Pinto Bean Politics!

When I was growing up in a country store on Beaver Creek in Knott County Kentucky, we sold pinto beans by the pound, weighed from a galvanized barrel that sat under the main counter in the store. We bought the beans in 100 pound bags, dumped them in the barrel which also held a pretty nice blackjack carved from a piece of wood to a shape just like a miniature baseball bat, about a foot long with a nice handgrip and about a 3-4 inch circumference on the head which was drilled to about three inches down the handle to include a nice round cylinder of lead. To my knowledge the blackjack was never used in the long period my parents operated the store. Our customers came in, usually talked small talk for a short while, bought whatever they needed, maybe even a pound or two of pinto beans, and left without ever needing to be knocked out with the blackjack in the bean barrel. I no longer own that blackjack but in today's world of the most corrupt politics in the history of the nation, and the worst living example of a human being working on a daily basis from the White House to destroy the entire nation and our democracy, we sure need a good metaphorical political blackjack. On a recent check of the price of pinto beans, I found that WalMart is charging $14.94 for a 20 pound bag of pinto beans. That boils down to about 74.7cents a pound for bulk pinto beans. WalMart is now selling the one pound bag of pinto beans for a dollar. When I was often helping my parents behind the bean barrel, I don't think we ever charged more than 10cents a pound and we were making a decent profit in those days. The point to this focus on pinto beans is important because there are millions of Americans of all stripes and cultures who are eating pinto beans on a daily basis. Several different cultures are highly dependent on pinto beans as a staple source of protein. Most people of moderate to poor means in the American south depend on pinto beans as a major portion of their diet. That includes both Caucasian and African American citizens of the deep south. Most members of the various Hispanic cultures in America are also largely dependent on pinto beans. Frijoles, in many forms, are a common sight on Hispanic dinner tables. Nearly every person who ever grew up in Central and Southern Appalachia grew up, in large part, on pinto beans. We even had pinto beans once a week in the high school lunch room at Knott County High School at Pippa Passes, Kentucky, when I was a student there. Pinto beans may well be the answer to help us solve our ongoing attempted tyranny by TRAITOR Trump and the Right Wing Radical Repugnican party.

One of my favorite memories about pinto beans goes back to about 1992 when I was working for a short while, between human services jobs, at a horse farm in Central Kentucky. I was salesprepping several brood mares which were headed toward a November Breeding Stock Sale at Keeneland. The mares were actuallly owned by a man who was contracting for the sales prepping with the owner of a farm I was working on at the time. I was sent to the owner's farm to do the work. One day, the owner who was born and raised in Quito Ecuador, a Mexican immigrant blacksmith, and I were standing in front of a barn in a conversation and found ourselves talking about how we had grown up in three very different locations and cultures. We suddenly discovered that all three of us had grown up eating pinto beans, one in Mexico, one in Ecuador, and one in Eastern Kentucky. It was an educational moment for me for sure. What is the point to all this and politics? What the Democratic party needs to do to win all the next upcoming elections in this country is to locate, educate, register, and guarantee the turnout to vote of the great majority of the pinto bean cultures in America. If we do that we will be back in control of our country, our Democracy, and our future. We will no longer be facing the horrible situation in which we finid ourselves today. We can begin the next 25 to 50 years of necessary work in order to save our country after all the political, moral, and ethical damage which has been done over the last ten years by TRAITOR Trump and the other TRAITORS who facilitate most of his crimes against the government, the country, the world, and the planet. The answer is all about pinto beans.

"Aylesford Place: The Second Year" by Steve Demaree

On July 8, 2025, I wrote a blog post about the first book in this series by Steve Demaree, "Pink Flamingoed". My wife and I just finished book two in the series, "Aylesford Place: The Second Year". These books are self-published by Steve Demaree and he sells them on most of the available internet book sellers including Amazon. Aylesford Place is a mythical neighborhood on a single street in a town somewhere in Central Kentucky. The real Aylesford Place is located just north and east of the University of Kentucky campus right off Euclid Avenue. Physically, the mythical street in the books bears little resemblance to the real Aylesford Place. The neighborhood in the book is peopled by a collection of eight or ten different households ranging in age from late twenties (perhaps) to somewhere near the late seventies or eighties. Most of the characters have lived on Aylesford Place most, if not all, of their lives. However, the characters whom I consider to be the primary protagonists of the book are a young couple, Brad Forester and Amy Carmichael, a male mystery author and his female photographer girlfriend, who are married by the end of this book. Their best friends are Allison Davenport and her boyfriend Chuck Madden who are also married by the end of the book. As this novel begins, Chuck lives elsewhere in the mythical town and Allison owns her own home on Aylesford Place. After the wedding, they are both residents of Aylesford Place. Brad and Amy, after their marriage, decide to remodel the two adjoining Aylesford Place homes in which they were already living to make a connector between the two and turn Brad's house into a Bed and Breakfast. Allison is in a wheelchair and runs some kind of never quite fully described business from her home. Her inclusion as a character in the novel, actually a major character, is the best part of the book for me since my wife Candice has been in a wheelchair for almost thirty years. I commend Steve Demaree for creating this character and dealing with her appropriately. Few novelists in today's world have the strengthy of character to create such a character in their books. I suspect that Steve Demaree has, or has had, someone in his life in a wheelchair. He has Allison take part in the life of the neighborhood just as fully and functionally as any other character. She tackles life head on and usually wins. Nothing seriously dangerous of deadly ever happens on Aylesford Place. Everyone in the novel is generally always happy. They might have brief periods of being less than content but the causes are never earth shattering and they always come to a happy ending. For me, two of the major aspects of good fiction writing are the creation of an element known as Conflict and the Resolution of Conflict. Not much of that happens in Steve Demaree's books. No one ever develops cancer, hepatitis, insanity, or much more than an occasional headache or hangnail. The books lack sufficient of the reality of life to be the kind of writing that makes one wish to see the next book in a series. My wife Candice likes these books considerably more than I. I doubt that I would have read the second book if she had not wanted us to read it together as we always do with one book at a time, spending about 30 to 45 minutes a day with Candice washing our breakfast dishes while read from our ongoing book aloud. It works for us, keeps us close, and interested in the same topics most of the time. Our habit can be a good one for other couples to try, especially if you both love literature. I'm simply saying I love a higher class of literature.

"Mountain People, Mountain Crafts" by Elinor Lander Horwitz

Lately for a variety of reasons, I have been reading a lot of books about Appalachian Folk Art which is one of my favorite types of art and, in my opinion, some of the best art in America. Elinor Horwitz was a very prolific writer who published about a dozen books including at least three on Appalachian Folk Art and/or Appalachian Crafts. This particular book was published in 1974 and I actually learned about Horwitz and her work while reading a classic book on Appalachian Folk Art, "The Temptation: Edgar Tolson and The Genesis of Twentieth Century Folk Art" by Julia Ardery, a Kentucky writer. I will write about that book in a day or two. This particular book has one chapter on woodcarving and that chapter focuses heavily on Edgar Tolson and his work wiht several excellent photographs of Tolson and his work. I never knew Edgar Tolson but have heard numerous stories about him and his work from his son Donny Tolson who is also now dead. Interestingly, the photographs in this book, or at least most of them, were taken by Horwitz's two teenage sons who had traveled with her to visit various folk artists and crafters all over the region of Central and Southern Appalachian. One of her sons also took most of the photographs for another of her books which I will also write about in the upcoming days. This book is directed toward a general audience and makes no attempt to go into great detail about many aspects of Appalachian Fok Art and crafts. But Horwitz and her sons did visit most of the subjects of the book and I am also led to believe that she was a major collector of Appalachian arts and crafts. Some of the photographs are stunning and as good as one could expect to see from truly professional photographers. I haven't yet done enough research to learn if either of her sons pursued photography as a career, but I would not be surprised if they did. She broke the book down into three major chapters plus a short epilogue entitled "Today And Tomorrow" which reflects on the potential future of Appalachian Folk Art. It is a shame that the book was published with all the photographs in black and white. Many of the subjects of those photographs such as quilts, paintings, and other works would have been much more attractive and informative if they had been shot and published in full color. For several types of the work featured in the book, Horwitz discusses at length the process the creators used to produce the work, and her sons provided excellent photographs of several phases of the creative process when they were able to do so with the cooperation of the artists. It is also a good review of quite a few Appalachian Folk Artists and crafters who are now dead. But the book is well worth reading if you can find a copy since it is now more than fifty years old. I found my copy on a used book website and it is actually a former library book which I often avoid buying. But it was apparently not the most read book in that particular library and is in good shape. If you are interested in Folk Art or crafting, the book is worth digging up a copy.

"The Unvanquished" by William Faulkner, A Wonderful Novel of The Civil War And Reconstruction!

"The Unvanquished" by William Faulkner was originally published in 1934 and has been a staple of many college classes in Southern Literature, Civil War Literature, and general American Literature ever since. It is one of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County novels and features several key figures in the saga of his mythical county: John Sartoris, John Sartoris Jr., Ab Snopes, and others. The novel covers both the period of the Civil War and of early Reconstruction. The protagonist is John Sartoris, Jr. who is about 12 years old when the novel begins and a full grown adult at the end. His slave Ringo is also a major figure in the novel. The two are just a few months different in age and literally grew up together much like brothers, but clearly also a slave owner and a slave. Their relationship is a major key to everything in the novel. They are inseparable, literally bound at the hip. That relationship, as Faulkner portrays it, is both an indictment and an apologia for the entire slave holding culture of the south. The two work together to attempt to murder the first Union officer they ever see using a musket which resides on most occasions over the mantel in the main room of the Sartoris mansion. They are still together at the end of the novel as young Sartoris goes to confront his father's former business partner and killer. The novel is the basis of a strong argument about the much vaunted code of honor of southern gentlemen, and parts of it are said to have been a fictional portrayal of some events which took place in the life of an actual Faulkner ancestor. The individual chapters of the novel, seven in all, were originally published as short stories and the book is sometimes drawn into the perpetual argument among students of literature about just where a collection of short stories with common characters ends and a novel begins. In my opinion, it is a novel and that argument should have been ceased many years ago. For an example of a collection of such short stories with common characters fails to fulfill the requirements of a novel I suggest that you read "The Hawk's Done Gone" by Mildred Haun which is a fine book but not quite a novel. You could never find two better books to read in order to fully comprehend that argument, and to help put an end to it also. As the book progresses, John Sartoris, Jr. and Ringo progress from being two boys playing war in the dust near the slave quarters to become two young southern men, both black and white, who have survived both childhood and the Civil War to become very typical white slave holding and black slave men who are still, at least in their own eyes, brothers. John Sartoris, Sr. looms over the entire novel as a larger than life Colonel in the Confederate Army and as the head of the Sartoris family although he is not present on the plantation most of the time as the novel progresses. He is both a patriarch and a symbol of the failed Confederate effort. He is a role model for his son in the most traditional of senses, and is the axis on which much of the novel moves. His mother-in-law, Granny is a major character of the novel, maintains order at home while the elder Sartoris is off at war, and is dearly beloved by her grandson, the Sartoris slaves, and most of their neighbors. She concocts a plot to use a letter signed by the commanding Union officer in the area to confiscate over two hundred head of mules, disburse them to the poor, both black and white, in the area of the plantation, and is eventually caught in the scheme along with her grandson and Ringo. Ringo is both the brains of much of the operation and a loyal servant and man Friday to his young master and companion. Drusilla, a young female distant cousin of the elder Sartoris is a young woman who loses her fiancee to the Union forces and seeks to avenge his death by utilizing her talents with both guns and horses to assist the elder Sartoris and his troops in their doomed war. Her mother uses the old southern mores about what "good women" are supposed to do and be in order to force her to marry the elder Sartoris because she has spent many weeks riding, fighting, and hiding in the woods with him and his troops as a young single woman. This is a powerful novel of the Civil War and Reconstruction by a man who lived his life in the shadow of his own ancestors who had fought and lost in the effort. It addresses multiple issues which have arisen for several hundred years in the south: slavery, male and female relationships, rich versus poor whites, Union versus Confederate, young southerners living in the oversized shadows of their elders, and the dominant question since Lee surrendered, "just how do southerners go on living after the war?"