Wayne Caldwell

I have made countless treks into the Blue Ridge Mountains, growing up in North Georgia and having people in Tennessee. To my shame, I don’t believe I ever gave a thought to how many people were displaced by the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, how their land was taken from them, or the personal heartache that was suffered in order to give the land over to the enjoyment of the population in general. That is, I never gave it a thought until I stumbled across Wayne Caldwell’s [b:Cataloochee|931843|Cataloochee|Wayne Caldwell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1179565516l/931843._SY75_.jpg|916831].

Requiem by Fire is the continuation of the Cataloochee story and deals directly with the establishment of the Park and the almost cruel way in which people were evicted from their homes to make it happen. Caldwell is one of the most even-handed writers I have ever encountered. He does not draw black and white pictures, he paints in color. He lays all the facts and feelings before you and he lets you decide. After all, these are human beings and there are all kinds of motivations and emotions that go with that. I understood the desire to protect the area and build the Park, but I mostly felt the anguish of the men and women who had already invested lifetimes into this soil and these mountains, being told they might not even be allowed to be buried next to their kin in their own family cemeteries.

The mountain flavor here is genuine, the dialog perfection. Silas Wright, an old timer, says these words to Jim Hawkins, the newly minted warden who also happens to be born and raised in Cataloochee himself:

”What’s fine at seven in the morning can be awful at midnight. Seven in the morning, a man’s got some small reason to hope he’ll have a good day. Come dark, he knows he ain’t had one, and he’s got eight more hours to put up with whatever ghosts his mind might care to entertain.”

For me, this rang so true.

There is a way of life being lost, and as the older Cataloochians reminisce, we realize it was a way of life already abandoned in the valley, years ago. I became very attached to several of these characters, Silas, Mary Carver, and Jim; I cringed at at least one of them, the despicable Willie McPeters, and pitied the young ones, riding off to the city, who would never know what they had lost.

Wayne Caldwell is an amazing writer and a consummate storyteller. I hope to see many more gripping tales penned by his hand before he is through. I know he admires Wendell Berry, he quotes him in his opening to this book, and he is one of a rare handful of writers who might be able to fill his shoes.
… (meer)

4.5 - I love to visit the Smokies - stars.

Wayne Caldwell’s debut novel, [b:Cataloochee|931843|Cataloochee|Wayne Caldwell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1179565516l/931843._SY75_.jpg|916831], is an ambitious enterprise, for he seeks to tell not just the story of multi-generations of a family, but the tale of an isolated region of the North Carolina Appalachians, how it was settled and all its inhabitants, as well. The mountains of Cataloochee are as much a character in this novel as the ignoble Ezra Banks or any of the many families that are chronicled between its pages.

That Caldwell pulls off this epic tale so well is little short of a miracle, since it involves the introduction of enough characters to need a family tree to keep track of them, stories within the stories to bring each individual to life, and an almost meandering plotline. Still, it somehow hangs together so beautifully that you never feel any part of that until you have closed the book and are reflecting on its contents.

The character that glues all the stories together is Ezra Banks, who comes to the area at the age of 16, while fighting for the Confederacy at the end of the Civil War, and recognizes it as his own idea of paradise. He returns there when he is able to buy land, marries into the Carter family, well-established landowners and apple farmers, and begins a saga that is laced with foreboding from the beginning. Ezra is a difficult man, and a complex character. I hated him mostly, but there was a part of me that gave him grudging credit for the life he created through hard work and tenacity.

I am so impressed with Wayne Caldwell’s skill as a writer; he paints a picture with his prose that is soft and lyrical, but also hard and concrete. That he understands this region and its people is evident from word one. One of the issues he addresses is the coming of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the upheaval that represented for those who lived in these mountains. I have been to this paradise many times, and while I felt and mourned the loss this represented to its inhabitants, I was eternally grateful that it was preserved and is there for ordinary people like me to see and share just a little.

While reading, I was constantly reminded of one of my very favorite writers, Wendell Berry. Caldwell has his own style, which is very different from Berry’s, but he takes the best of Berry’s rural tradition and incorporates it into his own fiction, flawlessly. Caldwell acknowledges this influence openly, and it makes me happy to feel that Berry’s vision is being passed on in Southern Literature and will not be lost to us when he is gone.

Caldwell should be quite proud to have written a novel that is a sweeping saga with an extremely intimate feel. Some of the events might seem mundane or ordinary, like Hannah’s purchase of a Burdick sewing machine, but they are the moments in the book that made me feel attached to these people and ready to celebrate or mourn with them. There is no condescension, no caricature, and no belittling of the people or their way of life, even when those negative traits emerge, which are too often portrayed as defining mountain people.

In short (I know, you are saying “too late for that”), but, in short, it is a great piece of literature, don’t miss it.
… (meer)

My dear friend Diane reviewed this lovely little book and I was so taken by her review that I popped right over to Hoopla and downloaded it. I am very glad (as I generally am when Diane makes a recommendation) that I did so. Wayne Caldwell is an inspired writer and these poems go together to make a lovely story.

Diane has written a perfect review, so I will not attempt anything other than to say read hers and then read the book.

rel="nofollow" target="_top">Diane's Review… (meer)