Gap Creek, by Robert Morgan

Algonquin Books. Publication date: January, 2000

$22.95 Hardcover; ISBN: 1565122968

324 pages

If it were nothing else Gap Creek would offer practical tips on keeping house and farm, though it also offers these through some extraordinary circumstances. Somebody dies in both the first chapter and the last, and in-between there is sickness and starvation, fire and flood. Such an apocalyptic assortment would seem a bit much in any other book, but Morgan delivers such events with clarity and compassion, without overdoing the drama, and in the rhythms and inflections of his native region’s speech. There’s a chop wood carry water quality in the descriptions of physical work: cleaning a hog, rendering lard, skinning a turkey, planting crops, giving birth. These forceful descriptions actually outdo the calamities, and can leave the reader feeling exhausted but somehow refreshed.

Following their marriage, a young couple moves to Gap Creek, South Carolina around the turn of the century. Hank works at a mill and Julie cooks and cleans for a crotchety old crank named Pendergast in exchange for room and board. Pendergast dies trying to rescue his hidden savings during a fire, and Julie, now pregnant, gives the money to a man who tells her he holds the mortgage on the house. Through the disasters and false appearances, we respect Julie's strength and resourcefulness as she scratches out a living, even as we suspect her resentment toward having to shoulder more than her share of the chores and her ambivalence toward the husband who doesn’t like his authority to be questioned. In the end, the young couple face an uncertain yet hopeful future in their region.

Morgan has been called the poet laureate of Appalachia. In _Gap Creek_ he captures an elemental quality of the place as he displays a deep respect for its people--their customs, work and religion. Like Appalachia, this book is rough yet tender, dramatic yet commonplace, full of suffering yet persevering--and never hurried.