~THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS~

A New Review from The Mountain Express

2011-01-10T11:50:00.001-05:00

Book Report: A Day of Small Things

by Alli Marshall on 01/09/2011

Related topics: Book Report, book review, book, A Day of Small Things, Vicki Lane

A Day of Small Things is the latest Appalachian-themed novel by local author Vicki Lane. But this book, released in September of last year, does not feature crime solver Elizabeth Goodweather (the heroine of Lane’s previous works, Signs in the Blood, Art’s Blood, Old Wounds and In A Dark Season). Instead — part mystery, part folklore, part historical fiction — Day introduces a new set of heroines: Least, Redbird Ray, Birdsong Gentry and Miss Birdie.

Actually, all of those ladies are one in the same. Least is the last daughter born to a bitter mountain widow. With no patience for her daughter’s strange ways, Fronnie pronounces Least to be “quare” (the book is full of mountain lingo and dialect) and no good for anything but staying home and doing chores around their lonely subsistence farm. Least knows no better until her kind-hearted grandmother comes to live out her final days on the homestead. It’s Granny who recognizes that Least has powers, among these calling on the “Little Things” or fairies for help in times of danger.

Later, fleeing a cruel fate, Least finds her way to Gudger’s Stand — a dance hall / restaurant / bar / meeting place / house of ill repute on the French Broad River. It’s there that she, for a brief time, dyes her hair and becomes Redbird Ray, the dancing girl.

In fact, Gudger is an old family name in the Asheville, and Gudger’s Stand makes its way into other Lane novels. Read Lane’s blog and it’s easy to see how she finds inspiration in the buildings, landscape and history around her. In Day, she taps into even more local resources, drawing on Cherokee mythology, Holiness traditions and a number of newspaper clippings and excepts from advertisements and books. These are added at the end of each chapter like a scrap book, lending a weight of corroboration to the wild tale.

And it is a wild tale. Redbird becomes Birdsong when she returns to her homestead, marries her sweetheart and starts a family. She promises her new husband that she will give up her powers. “In time to come I will gather up my few memories of Redbird Ray — a bracelet and a fancy pair of rhinestone hair combs — along with the first bits of writing that Granny Beck showed me, some with the words to the spells, and Luther will dig a hole up at the burying ground under the big oak and we will busy my past there — the quare girl and the dancing girl.”

That ends the first part of the book, which takes place between 1922 and 1939. The second half is set in 2007 over just a handful of days. Here, Birdsong is 85 years old. She’s buried her husband and all of her children, most of whom never lived to adulthood. But despite these tragedies, she seems content in her waning years and has kept her promise about not practicing her spells. That is, until Birdie’s neighbor Dorothy comes to her for help. Dorothy’s ward, 13 year-old Calven, has been kidnapped by his mostly absent, drug-addicted mother and two unsavory men with criminal intent. It’s up to the elderly women, along with the help of their Christian friend Belvy, to save Calven.

The entire novel is addictive and surprising, filled with intriguing bits of information about Western NC. Lane is an adept storyteller, pulling out all the right details to make mountain life in the 1930s a vivid picture. Indeed, the first half of the book is the most compelling even though the action (villains! chase scenes!) come in the later chapters. Young Least, with her simple ways, connection to the earth and its spirits and her magical worldview is a delightful and engaging character. While hers is a story of poverty, neglect and isolation, Lane does such an excellent job crafting the settings and characters (supernatural Mr. Aaron, a recurring co-star, is a scene stealer from the book’s front half) that the tale is rich from start to finish.

Lane’s next novel, Under the Skin is due out this coming Autumn.

And The LA Times says...

2010-11-08T09:27:00.000-05:00

Crimes grow in rich Appalachian soil

Sharyn McCrumb's 'The Devil Amongst the Lawyers' and Vicki Lane's 'The Day of Small Things' find a rare mix of thriller elements in a particular region.

By Sarah Weinman Special to the Los Angeles Times

November 7, 2010

Say the word "Appalachia" in some variant or another and the probability is pretty high that someone will come back with a humorous remark — or one he or she thinks is funny, but isn't. It's a region that stretches as far north as the state of New York and as far south as the mid-point of Mississippi, with more than 23 million strong living within boundaries that first began to be recognized as a distinct entity in the 19th century. And yet, the snickers emitted when South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford claimed, in 2009, that he was "hiking the Appalachian Trail" — rather than own up to an extramarital affair — had as much to do with the culturally backward connotations of his excuse as the scandal itself.

It's easier to make fun of something one doesn't understand, and Appalachia's mix of strong religious ties, farming, crop cultivation and Cherokee Indian folklore produces a brew that might be even more potent than the moonshine the region was long famous for. As a result, the crime fiction that originates from Appalachia teems with pungent smells and sounds and is steeped in the roots of generations of families — and, of course, in blood, especially of past sins coming due in the present.

The undisputed queen of such fiction — even though she has repeatedly professed to loathe being categorized this way — is Sharyn McCrumb. Her series of eight Ballad novels, beginning with "If I Ever Return, Pretty Peggy-O" (1990) and most recently adding "The Devil Amongst the Lawyers" (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's: 336 pp., $24.99) explores Appalachian history and folklore through an autobiographical lens (McCrumb's family settled in the western North Carolina mountains in the 1790s). Each book is set at a different historical point in time, incorporating real murder cases and pinned structurally on the rhythms of real songs; the series features generations of recurring characters — the predominant, and most beloved by fans, being Nora Bonesteel, a "wise woman" gifted with second sight.

"The Devil Amongst the Lawyers" flashes back to 1935, when the country was mired in the Depression, the Appalachian region hit especially hard. The situation is exacerbated on a national scale when a schoolteacher is tried for murdering her father, and incoming media from urban areas see fit to mock the mountain town for its rural ways. Nora, here age 12, is new to her gift, and immediately she's seized on by her newspaperman cousin to ferret out the real truth about the murder in the absence of tangible evidence. While the story falters near the end, McCrumb's obvious love of the region never wavers and offers a lesson or two for those on America's East and West poles who dare sneer down at those living in-between.

While McCrumb pens a new Ballad novel only every few years, those looking for a fix will be well-satisified by the novels of Vicki Lane, who dwells on a mountain farm in North Carolina. She first attracted attention in crime fiction circles with her series featuring Elizabeth Goodweather, a 50-ish proprietor of an herb and flower garden with an open heart and a curious mind about beliefs she may not necessarily share. Those traits serve her well as an amateur sleuth looking into crimes in Ridley Branch, where members of militia groups, back-to-the-landers, believers in extraterrestrials and fundamentalist Christians all dwell together, uncomfortably enough to throw up a murder every now and then.

With "The Day of Small Things" (Dell: 414 pp., $7.99 paper), Lane moves away from the series and more in a direction first traveled by both McCrumb and Carolyn Wall, author of the excellent 2008 novel "Sweeping Up Glass" (Delta: 336 pp., $15 paper). Lane uses a traumatic birth scene to introduce us to a baby whose mother, in a fit of pique from too many babies birthed already, names her Least — and proceeds to treat her youngest child with disdain, neglect and, occasionally, abuse.

Employing a langorous prose style inflected with mountain dialect, Lane unspools the arc of Least's life, from her grandmother's discovery that she has The Sight ("I knowed the first minute I seen the child Least that she had the Gifts — could read it in her eyes — though it was likewise clear she hadn't no idea of what the Gifts are and how she might use them") to marriage to a man deeply wedded to the Church (and less to the more magical elements of Least's abilities). She takes readers into Least's current life, nearer to the end than the beginning, and a threat on her final years cast by the arrival of a dangerous criminal. With these changes come changes to her name, as Least sheds her horrible moniker for the more fitting one of Birdie (or, sometimes, Little Bird), which connotes the free spirit she grows into and the spirits she is in semi-constant contact with.

"The Day of Small Things" shines as a chronicle of Depression-era Appalachia and the coming-of-age of Lane's protagonist, who starts out with wings clipped and later lets them go free. When danger hits as Birdie grows very old, Lane isn't quite as skillful at evoking the suspense necessary to warrant our fear that Birdie won't leave the world on her own terms. But like McCrumb, Lane demonstrates how deeply she feels part of her Appalachian home, how tied she is to the land and the pulsating beats that can't quite be found elsewhere.

Weinman blogs about crime and mystery fiction at http://www.sarahweinman.com. "Dark Passages" appears monthly at latimes.com/books.

It's Here!

2010-10-11T17:00:00.000-04:00

At long last! The haunting story of Miss Birdie Gentry. There's far more to Birdie, past and present, than meets the eye. . .

ABOUT THIS BOOK

A night of reckoning . . .
A dawn of danger . . .

In the misty folds of Appalachia, the girl they call Least grows up cursed by her mother’s cruelty and blessed by her neglect. Deemed unfit to join the outside world, Least turns to the wisdom of the land, to voices she alone can hear, to legends left by native Indians, and to the arts of divination and healing.

But the time comes when Least has to choose between a doting suitor and her childhood magic, between his church and her spirits. Now, as her life enters its final chapter, her world has been invaded by a violent criminal with a chilling plan. To stop him from committing an unspeakable crime—and to free an innocent child—the woman who was once Least must break long-held promises, draw on long-buried powers, and face a darkness no one else can even see.

~~~

Deborah Crombie, New York Times best-selling author of the Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James mysteries has this to say about Birdie's book:

"Vicki Lane is one of the best American novelists writing today.  In The Day of Small Things, she has once again rendered a lyrical, evocative, and haunting portrait of life in the Appalachians, both past and present. And in Birdie, she has given us a character who will steal your heart and stay with you for a long time to come. 

I loved this book--The Day of Small Things will definitely make my short list for 2010."

~~~

HURRAH!!!

2010-09-27T23:50:00.000-04:00

My heavens, it's taken a long time! But Miss Birdie's book is here at last!!!

I'd love to know what you think of it.