Blood Feud - Hardcover

Thomas, Annabel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1572330260 ISBN 13: 9781572330269

Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press, 1998

Synopsis

In Stone Man Mountain, a multigenerational saga brimming with character and incident, Annabel Thomas explores struggles of truly epic proportions: between city and country, modernization and tradition, love and power, violence and creativity.

When, in 1910, York Mende’s grandmother moves him from the hills of southeastern Ohio to a town in the flatlands, the boy is glad to leave his Appalachian heritage behind. Raised on Horatio Alger stories and tales of his cunning politician grandfather, York comes to enjoy city life while studying veterinary medicine and reigning as a star athlete at the university. From time to time, he must return to the hill country to look after his inherited property, but he is careful  to avoid being snagged by any mountain girl—especially Dissa Marie Lovett, who plainly sees him as a means to getting herself out of the hills. When Dissa finally does escape, she rejoices, but eventually she realizes that she has left not only the Appalachians but also her identity and her moral and spiritual framework.

It is Dissa’s artist daughter, Rohanna, who returns to the hills. Crippled physically and emotionally by a friend’s betrayal, she is drawn to Tavis Clendennin, a schoolteacher and blacksmith, who shows her how strip mining is destroying the land. When the mysterious murders of local children remind Rohanna of her own past traumas, she withdraws into herself, afraid to trust anyone. Only gradually, in learning how to turn her agrarian roots into art, does Rohanna find meaning for her life and a way to live in the company of others.

Spanning forty years and set against a richly textured background, Stone Man Mountain is a thoroughly engrossing novel that combines narrative power, an unwavering command of voice and dialect, and remakable insight into human frailties and strengths.

The Author: Annabel Thomas is the author of Blood Feud, The Phototropic Woman, and Knucklebones. She is a native of Columbus, Ohio, with family ties to the Appalachian foothills.

About this title

Review:

Feuds are almost a staple of Appalachian lore--who hasn't heard of the Hatfields and the McCoys, after all? And where there's a family feud, there must be two star-crossed lovers caught in the middle; such is the stuff great folk ballads are made of. In Blood Feud, the warring families are the wealthy Clemmers and the rebellious Kilkinneys, and the lovers are the story's narrator, 13-year-old Winnie Clemmer, and 15-year-old Davey Kilkinney. Set in a coal-mining community in Ohio just before the onset of the Second World War, the novel follows an escalating series of events that jerk the two families out of an uneasy years-long truce and propel them into direct and bloody conflict. A strike, a disaster at the mine, a young Romeo and Juliet caught in the middle--what rescues these too-familiar ingredients from being just another rehash of an ages-old story is Annabel Thomas's fine and lyrical prose, and her perceptive heroine's singular voice. She may be only 13, but Winnie recognizes a fundamental parallel between the battle brewing in Colerain County and the greater war hovering on the world's horizon: "Self-interest starts them, plain meanness keeps them going. And of course whoever wins, the results are the same: the shriveling of souls." A lot happens to young Winnie Clemmer in this novel, but her soul remains expansive to the end.

About the Author:

The Author: Annabel Thomas is the author of Blood Feud, The Phototropic Woman, and Knucklebones. She is a native of Columbus, Ohio, with family ties to the Appalachian foothills.

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1572330260
• ISBN 13: 9781572330269
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208