Hi. Have you met me? My name is Page and when I get an idea in my head I very rashly pursue it regardless of the merit of the idea or the time, energy, or money it will cost. That's how this blog started. That's why I once signed up and paid for a semester's worth of business classes at the local community college after I got a Master's degree in Psychology (please never bring that up to me again, thank you). And that's how we ended up in Montreat, NC the second week of January this year.
If you have very line of The Office memorized like I do, you'll remember when Pam says, "I get ten vacation days a year and I try to hold off taking them for as long as possible. This year I got to the third week in January." Well, I made it exactly 3.5 work days in 2021 before I took a vacation. Don't take that as an indication of how I feel about my job. Despite what Wes will tell you (because he has to hear me complain about everything that goes wrong), I actually really like my job. The point of this vacation wasn't about getting away, it was about SNOW!!!!!
I like to tell people that one of the reasons we don't want kids is so we can take last minute trips whenever we want. The truth is we never take last minute vacations. This is an area of my life that I do not make rash decisions about because I'm so scared of missing something awesome that I have all our vacations planned out in a Google Doc spreadsheet by the hour months in advance. Not this time. I was so adamant about seeing snow this year that we finally took an unplanned vacation. I found out on Wednesday that western NC would be getting snow that weekend and we left on Thursday.
This blog isn't about hiking or snow, so I won't dwell too much on those aspects of the trip, but I will say that I haven't had that much fun or been that happy or had such peace (or such knee pain) as I had while hiking in the snow that weekend.
About two miles up Graybeard Trail I thought it would be a good idea to visit a Little Free Library while we were in WNC. When we got back to the truck, I quickly pulled up the map on the website. There were two libraries listed in Black Mountain, NC (which is the bigger town that is adjacent to the village of Montreat). One was downtown outside a bookstore and the other was in a neighborhood a few miles from downtown. We were dripping wet with snow and very cold, so we headed downtown hoping to find a coffee shop on the way to the LFL.
The thing about the Little Free Library map is that it depends on the stewards to update the information about the libraries and sometimes the information you get is out of date. This was the case for the downtown LFL. We found the Sassafras on Sutton bookstore where the LFL was supposed to be. It was a cute place with funny phrases chalked on the widows.
What it was not was a home to a LFL. I know that for sure because we walked around the entire block it was located on in the freezing weather on slick sidewalks searching for the damn thing. We never found an open coffee shop, either, as most of the businesses were either closed for the snow or the Rona. So the whole trip downtown was worthless.
Still cold and wet and tired, we headed to the other library on the map. I plugged the address into my GPS and we drove until the road ended in a parking lot. It looked like both the road and my search for a Little Free Library were at an end. Still, we were in the right place according to the map so I decided to at least get out and try to find it. Wes and Duffy stayed in the car because they were just as exhausted as me and did not have the motivation of a highly regarded literally blog they needed to gather material for, as I did.
It turns out the LFL was located in a community garden. That place was a mountain hippie paradise. The Dr. John Wilson Community Garden is sandwiched between a horse farm and a frisbee golf course with a trail running through it. As I followed the path I later learned was the Garden Greenway Trail, I was convinced that every box-like thing I saw was the LFL . . . until I got up to it and realized it was a bird house
or whatever this thing is
because none of those things were a LFL. I started to have flashbacks to a time when I trespassed on private property in search of a Little Free Library.
Travel back with me to the GREAT BEFORE, back to 2017 when times were precedented. Wes and I closed on our first home in December of that year and one of my first orders of business was to see if there were any LFLs within walking distance. I pulled up the not-so-trusty LFL map and got in the car to find the closest one to my house. I committed the address to memory, 4409 Country Club Road, and took off in my car to find it.
Except there was no 4409. The mailboxes skipped from 4407 to 4501. Knowing myself, I decided that I must have just misremembered the address and it was likely 4407 so I did a U-turn. I turned on the road between 4407 and 4501 which leads to Morehead Primary School so that I could park on the side of that road which was not as busy at Country Club. Anyway, I had to drive all the way down that road to the school itself to be able to turn and come up beside 4407 because there is a concrete median, I'm assuming to help keep the minivans flowing in the right direction at drop-off and pick-up.
I pulled beside the house and walked into this person's yard. I opened the of the LFL door and was immediately confused because there were pipes in this Little Free Library. I stuck my head fully inside this structure thinking maybe the books were just further back in the corner. It did not hit me that this was not, in fact, a book sharing box but SOMEONE'S WELL HOUSE until after I put my head inside SOMEONE'S WELL HOUSE. I shut the door and yelled in the direction of the house, "I must have gotten some bad information!" and then I ran back to my car and high-tailed it out of there.
Just for reference, here is the Google Maps street view of the structure in question. I parked in the street that you can see to the right and walked through the yard to that cute little house that was painted red at the time and looked exactly like an old timey school house and Officer, you tell me if you think it is a stretch that a library would be modeled to look like an old timey school house because I most certainly do not think it is a stretch and look I'm sorry ok I did not mean to trespass and my intentions were in no way nefarious and what kind of world is it when you arrest people just for wanting to read what kind of Fahrenheit 451 shit is this anyway?
Of course, I didn't get arrested, but honestly this is almost as embarrassing as when I did actually get arrested (different story for a different day). Now when something turns out to be different from what we were expecting, Wes will turn to me and say, "We must have gotten some bad information" and apparently that will never get old.
Ok, now back to Black Mountain and the unprecedented times we are currently living in. After walking to the furthest end of the community garden from where we had parked, I finally found the actual LFL. Look at her all painted up with reading bees and topped with a gorgeous white hat.
On the website, the steward wrote, "In memory of my twin sister Sharon McKinney Fowler."
Besides the location and the artwork, this LFL was unusual in one other way: the lack of variety. Usually, these boxes have a little bit of everything - fiction, nonfiction, kids books, and if you have been a very good girl you just might find a cross-stich magazine from August 1996. Out of the 13 books in this box (the 2 DVDs obviously don't count), 3 were how-to books on growing shit, 1 was a magazine with paintings of some man from maybe Russia I couldn't tell because the writing was in another language he just looked Russian if that's possible, 1 was a pictorial history of nearby Montreat College (which I almost took because I really love that place), and 5 were historical/documentary/memoir non-fiction books. None of which interested me personally or would have made a good blog post. I mean imagine if I read that 300 page Step-by-Step Successful Gardening book and then tried to review it. You'd have to wait until Summer 2021 to see if the book really did help me successfully grow a garden. I don't know if I can spoil the result of something that didn't happen, but Spoiler Alert - I would not have become a successful gardener.
That left Twilight of the Drifter and Where Truth Lies. On the back cover of Where Truth Lies, the summary said something about a woman who goes to a small town to fulfill a requirement of her ex-husband's will and a FBI agent who goes to the same small town to clear his father's name and together they find that the small town is hiding big secrets (aren't they all?). I was in no way fooled by this action mystery summary because anytime there is a straight man and a straight woman and a small town it doesn't matter what else happens the book is required to be a romance novel and the whole point of this blog was to read other genres and I already broke that rule in the first post and if I broke it in the second post I would just have to call this blog Page in Romance Books and I already paid for one domain name and I don't want to have to pay for another so I picked Twilight of the Drifter by Shelly Frome.
Since I picked this book by default, I really only gave a cursory glance to the book itself. On the top of the back cover are the words Literary Fiction/Southern Gothic followed by the summary which says, "Twilight of the Drifter is a crime story with southern gothic overtones. It centers on thirty-something Josh Devlin, a failed journalist who, after a year of wandering, winds up in a Kentucky homeless shelter on a wintry December [day]."
Here I am, curled up with Bertha (my bathrobe) and Duffy and what I hoped would be a good book. Based on that brief perusal of the back flap, I was conjuring a mix of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Road by Cormac McCarthy so imagine my surprise when - wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.
The lack of the word day in the summary should have been my first clue that this book would be hard to read, but like I said, cursory glance. There were two other paragraphs following the one cited above that I did not read and then an About the Author blurb which I also did not read. Had I read all those things, I likely would have went home with Candy Girl, the memoir of a stripper.
The About the Author section told me that this book was written by a northerner. I don't mean that in a War of Northern Aggression type of way. I mean that solely as it relates to language. I'm a southern girl (but definitely not the type that would ever wear a shirt that says I'm a southern girl, why do you do that someone please tell me). I have an accent, maybe not as strong as it used to be, but still very noticeable. I am in love with the language that is spoken on Fairview Road. I don't miss a lot about my hometown, but I do miss that. There's this whole language of grunts and harrumphs and barely enunciated sounds that are really entire sentences and maybe even words that no one else knows.
Appalachian speech is a misunderstood magic. It's something that I am very protective of about southern culture. You can talk as much shit as you want to about our love of butter and lard and mayonnaise. You can make fun of our devotion to Nascar and camouflaged wedding dresses and Mountain Dew. But you better not say a word about how we talk. We ain't stupid, we just talk funny.
I used to be embarrassed by my accent. We went to Niagara Falls when I was in middle school and as soon as we crossed the Kentucky border waitresses started making fun of the way I said sweet tea. To be fair my accent was thicker as a child and it sounded something like suh-weet ta-ee-ah. I didn't say a word to anyone that was not my family member that whole week until we finally reached a home away from home in the form of a Cracker Barrell off the interstate in KY on the way back. But now I'm proud of it.
So when I say this is a book about the south written by someone from up north, what I mean is that he butchered our language. I do understand that there are many different souths, for instance there's the Appalachian south and the Deep South and Cajun south and then there's Texas, each with their own particularities in language. So I won't pretend to be an expert in how people on the Memphis, TN/Mississippi border talk, but I know it ain't like how it is in this book. I literally cringed every time I saw a beginning quotation.
"Like I said, I'll run it by Bubba. Still up to his ears in debt . . . While you got your cushy huntin' camp maintenance, old gun hobby and, like as not, don't pay me no mind. I will run it by my own kin. Let him snitch my good rye whiskey hollerin' about the unfairness of it all. At least he'll by-God listen. I'll catch up with him and, soon as he's through lettin' off more steam, we'll both run it by ol' Johnny Reb himself."
That quote demonstrates the first point and brings us to the second reason I should have read the entire back cover. Those other two paragraphs revealed what I didn't find out about until Chapter 7 - that this book centered on a failed journalist and a young girl who run into gang of white supremacist assholes in a small town in Mississippi in what I think is supposed to be the early to mid 2000s and get caught up in the aftermath of these older white men's crimes against two black men during the Civil Rights Movement decades before.
As much as the author got wrong about southern dialogue, he got two things right. First, he was great at setting the scene and secondly, he was right about how racists like to present themselves and their ideas as something other than racism. They will use phrases like "preserving our heritage" and "having pride in who we are". Another example is how they talk about socioeconomics. For instance, there is a radio personality and an elected official who have a conversation in the book where they are trying to present their economic strategy as fiscal conservatism. But in reality, it is a way to take resources away from those who are historically oppressed and in need of those resources because of systemic racism.
Although the book does deal with a very overt and violent act of racism that is typical of how media often portrays racism, especially during the Civil Rights movement, I was very glad to see this more subtle, but still very dangerous, racism represented because it is important to recognize all the ways that people of color are discriminated against. This is the type of racism I have most often encountered and not just in my hometown. I heard some white woman in the deli of the Food Lion here in NC talking to another white woman about how she didn't understand how black people could just "take" welfare checks because she worked and even her teenage son worked while taking college classes and why couldn't they? And I'll be extremely honest with you in a way that will make both of us uncomfortable, like I promised to be in that introductory post, I used to kinda feel the same way. I thought (likely because I had heard older white people express similar ideas) that as someone who grew up in a rural area without many resources, I had the same disadvantages as poor black kids and even more disadvantages than black kids from more affluent families. I didn't understand why they were eligible for scholarships just because they were black. Basically, I was buying into the lie of reverse racism. Now, I understand more clearly just how systemic racism is, even for wealthy black people. And for poor black kids, they have to overcome the lack of resources, just like I did, but on top of that struggle they ALSO have to fight a fight that I'll never even fully understand. I still have a lot to learn and unlearn, I know, but I think it’s important to talk about the things that we used to believe because that proves that people can grow and that is what our country needs.
Ok, now back to the actual book review.
The first chapter of this book was so good. It was a page and a half of pure perfection in scene setting and suspense. I mean, just read the first sentence.
Wolf Creek was silent again, shrouded and hidden away in the fading early December light.
Good, right?
You know that person you dated in college? The one who you couldn't even look at for months because you were so attracted to them that your mind would just shut down if you did? Then they finally notice you, too, and that first time their eyes meet yours electricity paints a pattern over your body you could never recreate. Every single time you are in the same room as them the butterflies clog up your stomach and claw their way up your throat until you can't breath but breathing doesn't matter anymore anyway. What is breathing to seeing them and kissing them and touching them? But then you find out that they are sexy texting a friend of a friend of yours and you know it wouldn't bother you so much if that one brief month you had with them wasn't so intense and perfect.
Yeah. That's exactly what this book was like. That first chapter had me hooked. What was happening on Wolf Creek? Who was that girl and how did she get hurt and why does the tall man's shovel have blood on it if he was only watching the girl from a distance??????? I was so into this first chapter. But then I found out the book was sexy texting a friend of my friend. Total devastation.
Josh, the main character, is from a well-to-do family who started slumming it at first to get in with the seedy underbelly of society in hopes of writing a newspaper story. Josh's main problem in life is that he just can't seem to follow through with anything. He uses the word wanderlust a lot (too much). His recent stint in a homeless shelter and working in an scrap yard has finally convinced him that he needs to get his life together and finally stick something out till the end. It's just unfortunate that the thing he decides to finally finish requires him to go against a group of powerful and crazy men who have committed several murders. I mean, couldn't he have just finished writing that story about gambling in Vegas instead? Pick your battles, man.
Besides the lack of follow-through, Josh's other problem is that he's a rich white man who is in love with the blues, but isn't any good at playing the harmonica he carries around with him. Dewey, who is an old black man who works at Josh's uncle's bar tells him he can't play the blues because he's never crossed that line.
"Once you been there, the only way to bear what's like to break inside you, what cuts you to the bone, is to holler it out. It's from the inside out, not the outside in."
Josh meets Alice, a 13 year old, in a boxcar in Kentucky on his way from the scrap yard to the homeless shelter. She is freezing, clearly injured, and has lost her memory of how she got that way. Josh decides that he is now her keeper no matter how little she wants his help. He takes her from Kentucky back down to Memphis where his uncle Billy has a job for him delivering liquor. Josh thinks he can make some money and get Alice back to safety, not realizing that heading south is leading her into more danger.
On the trip, Josh learns a little more about Alice's situation. She was sent from her mother's house up north to live with an aunt in Mississippi because her mother's new boyfriend didn't want children. The aunt, who we meet later, is one of those stereotypical churchgoers who is always spouting religious phrases but can't be bothered to show the love of Christ to anyone.
Josh takes Alice to Billy's where we meet Billy's girlfriend or bar manager, never really sure which she was, a drunk mess of a woman named Ella and Dewey, the cook who also plays the blues. We learn that Dewey has a sad and traumatic past, but no one wants to talk about any of the details besides the fact that he was arrested for impersonating a bus driver (I think this was a civil rights protest, but the book doesn't give a clear account of the scene) and spent some time on a prison farm.
Conveniently, Josh has to make deliveries to the very region where Alice's crazy aunt Ada Mae lives and where Alice got into whatever trouble she's in. Here, we meet a cast of characters in addition to Ada Mae. Darryl, the liquor store owner full of southern pride. Officer Sonny Drew, a small town cop who is scared of losing his job but very happy with the new baton he has, taking every opportunity to show off his skillzzz with that weapon. Strother, a man who is very bad at Texas hold 'em and trades Josh information about the locals for tips that Josh picked up slumming around Vegas.
And then there's LuAnn. LuAnn is in school to become a social worker but manages a diner and a bar to make ends meet. Turns out LuAnn is one of those bleeding hearts you hear about, picking up every stray she comes across, including Alice. LuAnn is concerned for Alice but not enough to get mixed up with Josh at first. Eventually, Alice runs away from Josh and ends up staying with LuAnn. Josh stays with LuAnn, too, and you get the impression they may be starting a relationship. This was something that was hinted at in the book, but that story line felt like an afterthought and needed a lot more work to be fully realized.
For about 200 pages, Josh runs around between Memphis and Ole Miss trying to figure out what happened to Alice so he can solve her problem and keep her safe once and for all. His motivation isn't all altruistic, he is also still interested in picking back up with journalism and he thinks that Alice's problem could uncover something worthy of an exposé. He hooks up with a journalism professor at Ole Miss who gives him some encouragement to follow the story. Slowly (too fucking slowly) he learns that the trouble that made Dewey so good at playing the blues is connected to Alice's situation.
I will spare you all the twists and turns because I wish someone had spared me. In the end, it turns out that this group of men causing the current trouble met in college and formed their little Johnny Reb gang. They killed an inter-racial couple that Dewey happened to be in a car with and that's why they made Dewey's life a living hell and drove him from his home in Mississippi to Memphis. Alice had seen one of the group, a man named Bubba, attempt to blackmail another, a man named Roy, for the killing of the couple and subsequently Roy kills Bubba for being a traitor. Roy was the tall man with the bloody shovel in chapter 1. Alice was willing to trade the location of the blackmail material and promise silence concerning the murder in exchange for the group to leave her alone, but of course their plans were to kill her after she divulged the location of the box.
If anything was worse than the dialogue in this book, it was the texts that Roy sent to Alice.
put th bx in th sac by th watr twr do it b4 5 or els cum alone or els do it rite yl gt th $ jest reed th note
But at least this was done purposefully by the author.
In saving Alice from these men in a very dramatic scene set at dusk on the same spot on Wolf Creek where the book opened, Josh sees Darryl get killed before he is able to wrangle Roy to the ground for the cops to take into custody. Thus, our hero has fulfilled his character arc by finally becoming a man who follows through and he 'crosses that line' by experiencing a traumatic situation so he is now finally able to play the blues just like Dewey.
The last chapter was a very satisfying end to the book. I actually enjoyed the last chapter, but maybe that's just because I was glad it was done.
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