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A rich and varied collection of stories about seekers of truth, who find it manifests itself in wonderful, humorous, and terrible forms. "One of the South's and indeed the country's finest writers . . . a novelist and poet of great range and talent."--Los Angeles Times.
The first refreshing thing about Chappell is that he knows how to tell a story. The second is that he doesn't pretend to be doing anything else. Ostensibly, the central character here is Granny Sorrells, an elderly North Carolina hillbilly on her deathbed. Granny is surrounded by her kinfolk, but we more or less lose track of her as a character once her grandson Jess starts to reminisce about Granny's stories of the local women she spent most of her life with. We thus learn about "The Shooting Woman," who seduced her husband with her marksmanship; "The Figuring Woman," who became the village soothsayer; "The Madwoman," who lost her wits after an unhappy affair, and so on. Although this concentration on strong, self-reliant backwoods girls brings the novel perilously close to self-parody at times, Chappell is able to provide enough color and credibility to the (easily recognizable) types he works with to rescue them from stereotype, and the old-fashioned and very formal device of giving us a narrator who stands largely outside the action of the tale works nicely to bring us into what ordinarily would be a very strange and disorienting world. To a large degree Chappell, like most regionalists, is attempting to re- create an entire society, and the success with which he does so gives his characters an uncommon depth and texture. Although his rhetoric can get a bit overblown, it usually supports the action and fits the characters.
Busy, satisfying, and wholesome: Chappell casts a sharp eye upon a very rich landscape and gives us a portrait as poignant as it is clear.
| The General Prologue | 3 | |
| In the Garden | 9 | |
| Susan's Morning Dream of Her Garden | 11 | |
| The Garden | 14 | |
| Nettle | 15 | |
| Marigold | 15 | |
| Honeysuckle | 15 | |
| The Fields | 16 | |
| Patience | 19 | |
| Literature | 21 | |
| The Good Life | 25 | |
| Grace Before Meat | 27 | |
| How the Job Gets Done | 27 | |
| My Hand Placed on a Rubens Drawing | 28 | |
| The Good Life | 31 | |
| Rejoinder | 31 | |
| Dialogue of Naughty and Nice | 32 | |
| Voyagers | 33 | |
| The Virtues | 34 | |
| The Garden of Love | 37 | |
| The Fated Lovers: A Story | 40 | |
| Ave atque Vale | 47 | |
| In the Garden | 47 | |
| I Love You | 48 | |
| The Stories | 48 | |
| A Glorious Twilight | 49 | |
| Recovery of Sexual Desire After a Bad Cold | 50 | |
| Poems of Character | 53 | |
| Transmogrification of the Diva | 57 | |
| Dipperful | 58 | |
| Remodeling the Hermit's Cabin | 60 | |
| The Presences at Sunset | 63 | |
| The Widow | 64 | |
| The Voices | 64 | |
| The Reader | 65 | |
| An Old Mountain Woman Reading the Book of Job | 66 | |
| My Grandmother Washes Her Feet | 68 | |
| Overheard in the Tea Room | 72 | |
| Third Base Coach | 72 | |
| Fast Ball | 72 | |
| Junk Ball | 73 | |
| Spitballer | 74 | |
| Strike Zone | 74 | |
| Dr. Bones | 76 | |
| Tiger in the Field of Flame Grass | 78 | |
| Latencies | 79 | |
| Some of It | 80 | |
| Score | 81 | |
| Meanwhile | 82 | |
| Teller | 83 | |
| The Bible of the Unlucky Sailor | 84 | |
| Poems of Fantasy | 87 | |
| The Sea Text | 92 | |
| Slow Harbor | 93 | |
| Visitation | 94 | |
| The Rose and Afterward | 95 | |
| Scarecrow Colloquy | 96 | |
| Observers | 98 | |
| (Prologue) | 100 | |
| The Transformations: A Fairy Tale | 101 | |
| Moonswarm | 107 | |
| Rider | 109 | |
| Narcissus and Echo | 110 | |
| The Story | 111 | |
| Pierrot Escapes | 112 | |
| The Tipsy Diva Remembers Pierrot | 114 | |
| Epigrams | 117 | |
| Going Through Zero to the Other Side | 118 | |
| Fleurs-des-Livres | 119 | |
| Upon a Confessional Poet | 120 | |
| No Defense | 120 | |
| Literary Critic | 121 | |
| Another | 121 | |
| Another | 121 | |
| Rx | 122 | |
| Upon an Amorous Old Couple | 122 | |
| U.S. Porn Queen (Ret.) | 123 | |
| Sex Manual | 123 | |
| Epitaph: Lydia | 123 | |
| Threads | 124 | |
| Satire | 124 | |
| The Epigrammatist | 125 | |
| Poems of Memory | 129 | |
| Humility | 134 | |
| A Prayer for the Mountains | 135 | |
| Seated Figure | 136 | |
| Abandoned Schoolhouse on Long Branch | 137 | |
| Child in the Fog | 138 | |
| Nocturne | 139 | |
| Message | 140 | |
| Cathedral | 141 | |
| Avignon and Afterward | 142 | |
| Heath at Two: Learning to Talk | 144 | |
| Afternoons with Allen | 145 | |
| Heath at Eight: New Drum Set | 146 | |
| Forever Mountain | 147 | |
| Epilogue | 151 | |
| Notes | 157 |
Overview
Fred Chappell's voice ...