Amy Greene (1) (1975–)

I finished this yesterday and have debated whether to rate this book 4 or 5 stars. I went for five because this book was very thought provoking and left me in a pensive mood. The characters are amazing, the atmosphere immersive and the writing brilliant. Not a thought or word was wasted , not an action was wrong, everything in this book has meaning.

Yuneetah,Tennessee in the 1930's, a small Appalachian town now about to be flooded, making the way for a new dam. The residents displaced from show more the place they call home, in most cases from farms that had been handed down throughout generations. A hard life, especially during the depression, but these people pitched in and helped each other.

A man from the TVA, will learn the hard way that displacing people has way more meaning than is first thought. A young woman, who wants only to protect her young daughters birthright. An Old women named Beulah, who reads bones and who takes in a young boy, who becomes a drifter. A woman named Silver, who is this drifters only friend and a sheriff who wants only to do the best for those under his protection.

All will learn a difficult lesson during these dark times, when a young child goes missing, a lesson about what all goes into making a home and a family. A novel about loyalty and honor for long held family traditions. A novel about the importance of family and friends and about how a community has much more meaning than houses and farms about to soon be under water. In short this novel makes us really see the people.

As Ellery the sheriff thinks, " He would try to remember what he must have known once, what he guessed all of Yuneetah had forgot. How a fresh crewel-work of snow dressed even the dustiest of their farmyard. How leaves shaped like the hands of babies sailed and turned on the eddies of the river. How an open meadow sounded when then stood still. How ripe plums tasted. How cucumbers smelled like summer. How lightning bugs made lanterns of their cupped palms. These things they hadn't lost. But, like Ellard they had grown too weary to see them anymore."

A novel that teaches us not to take thongs for granted, to see what one has before it is too late. Makes one think about towns that were and are no longer. A very brilliant and poignant novel show less

Byrdie Lamb, a woman born into a family of Appalachian women with “the touch,” doesn’t have that extra sensitivity or gift herself, though what she does have is an indomitable will. Losing all of her children too young, Byrdie has devoted herself to raising her granddaughter Myra after Clio, Myra’s mother, was killed by a train along with her husband. Myra grows up in Byrdie’s home on Bloodroot Mountain, half-fey and beautiful. She catches the eye of just about every boy around, show more but herself only has eyes for one man…John Odom, handsome as the devil and almost as wicked. When John’s returned love for Myra evolves into a twisted, abusive obsession, Myra runs away home to Bloodroot Mountain and Byrdie, bringing along her unborn twins and a small wooden box containing a wedding ring still attached to a finger. Those twins, Johnny and Laura, then grow up on the mountain, wilder than their mother ever was. Barefoot, uneducated, and kept a closely guarded secret from all but their closest neighbors on the mountain, the twins alternately long for and fear the world outside of Bloodroot. When their existence is discovered, they are forced out into that great world and into separate foster homes while their mother is taken to an insane asylum. The two must grow up as best they can, trying to make their own lives and families and find their way back to each other, their mother, and Bloodroot Mountain itself.

This family epic is told by alternating narrators and jumps back and forth in time, allowing for the ratcheting up of narrative tension, for foreshadowing, and for a broader perspective on the lives of those involved. Well-written, with vivid imagery and pitch-perfect emotional content, this debut novel is truly compelling. show less

I am trying to think what I can possibly say about this wonderfully moving novel by Amy Greene. If writing should show and not tell, Greene had perfected the art of showing to the point that it becomes living inside her characters’ skins.It is 1936, the TVA is about to flood the town of Yuneetah, Tennessee, and all its inhabitants must leave. Obviously, some are reluctant to go, but none as much as Annie Clyde Dobson. She determines to stay to the last possible moment and then her three show more year old daughter goes missing and cannot be found, and she may have stayed too long.

The cast of characters is so complete and so believable. The plot is tightly woven, with the anxiety at fever-pitch even for those above the line, who will be allowed to stay in the homes they know. Greene knows these people and this place, and because she does, we know them as well. They are depression era families, farming the land, living in the mountains, independent and strong. They are loners who don’t really want to be alone but don’t know how to be with anyone else. They are suspicious of outsiders, loyal to what they know, and superstitious because it is the knowledge that has been passed from the generations before that make them who they are.

I followed this story with an ache and a worry and a wrenching sadness. I cried (actual tears falling from my eyes so that it was too blurry to any longer read and I had to put down the book and walk away and dry up). I loved every inspired moment of this read and then I wanted to open the book and relive this again.

This is why I love Goodreads so much. I would never have found this book alone. I would have skirted over it and what a loss that would have been. show less

Book on CD performed by Dale Dickey

There is only one family left in the path of the lake. It’s summer 1936, and Annie Clyde Dodson stubbornly refuses to leave the farm that has been in her family for generations, despite the warnings of the government men who tell her that the new dam built by the Tennessee Valley Authority will cause the Long Man River to flood and forever cover the land with the lake that will form. She and her daughter have just two days before they’ll be forcibly show more evicted when 3-year-old Gracie disappears. Did she wander off? Or was she taken by the drifter that recently appeared?

Greene delivers a riveting story that explores the question: What cost, progress? Annie Clyde is a treasure. Not only is she strong-willed, but she is tenacious in her efforts to protect her family. Her pleas with her husband to stay with her and not give up the fight moved me deeply. And yet … certainly she was being foolhardy. No one – no matter how stubborn or how “right” - was going to win against the TVA and the encroaching lake waters. The Dodson’s loss of their home is representative of the hundreds of families displaced by such projects.

The novel is peopled with strong characters, from Beulah Kesterson, who found and raised the abandoned child, Amos, to Sam Washburn, the TVA agent who sympathizes and helps the Dodsons in their search for Gracie. I did get a little lost with the interconnected relationships between Sheriff Ellard Moody, Amos, Silver Ledford and Mary. These kinds of competing loyalties are what made the decisions so difficult: to stay or to go, to delay or to embrace change.

Dale Dickey gives a superb performance on the audio. Listening to her was like listening to these characters tell the tale. Her narration really put me into 1936 rural Tennessee. show less