Over the Plain Houses

by Julia Franks

Overview

It’s 1939, and the federal government has sent USDA agent Virginia Furman into the North Carolina mountains to instruct families on modernizing their homes and farms. There she meets farm wife Irenie Lambey, who is immediately drawn to the lady agent’s self-possession. Already, cracks are emerging in Irenie’s fragile marriage to Brodis, an ex-logger turned fundamentalist preacher: She has taken to night ramblings through the woods to escape her husband’s bed, storing strange keepsakes in a mountain cavern. To Brodis, these are all the signs that Irenie—tiptoeing through the dark in her billowing white nightshirt—is practicing black magic. When Irenie slips back into bed with a kind of supernatural stealth, Brodis senses that a certain evil has entered his life, linked to the lady agent, or perhaps to other, more sinister forces. Working in the stylistic terrain of Amy Greene and Bonnie Jo Campbell, this mesmerizing debut by Julia Franks is the story of a woman intrigued by the possibility of change, escape, and reproductive choice—stalked by a Bible-haunted man who fears his government and stakes his integrity upon an older way of life. As Brodis chases his demons, he brings about a final act of violence that shakes the entire valley. In this spellbinding Southern story, Franks bares the myths and mysteries that modernity can’t quite dispel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938235221
Publisher:	Hub City Press
Publication date:	05/01/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
Sales rank:	782,681
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Julia Franks has roots in the Appalachian Mountains and has spent years kayaking the rivers and creeks of Tennessee, North Carolina, and West Virginia. She lives in Atlanta, where she teaches literature and runs loosecanon.com, a web service that fosters free-choice reading in the classroom.

Editorial Reviews

A spellbinding story of witchcraft and disobedience.” —Carmen Maria Machado for NPR
“An absorbing human drama of marital discontent, misunderstanding, violence, and desperation. What a spellbinding, convincing, and completely satisfying novel this is!” —Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried
“Julia Franks writes wonderfully and knowledgeably about nature, with a fine eye for the textures of the physical world. Her ear for the diction and rhythms and creativity of Southern mountain speech delights on every page.” —Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain
“Man oh man. There’s writing and then there’s writing. Pick up Julia Franks’ debut novel Over the Plain Houses, turn to any page, and you just have to give into whimpers as you read.” —Charlotte Observer
“This book seems like it may have taken 240 years to write. At its best, which is all the time, it summons the smoke-swirling wilderness…. The startling images she retrieves conjure geologic time…. Franks’ mastery of technical details is daunting.” —Atlanta Journal Constitution
“This novel cannot be reduced to its treatment of the Depression, or of women's issues, any more than Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain could be called simply a Civil War novel. Over the Plain Houses captures elemental emotions.” —Knoxville News Sentinel
“A stunning debut novel set profoundly in depression-era Western North Carolina that focuses on the familial and communal conflict that arises out of a man’s utter commitment to fundamentalist religion...An utterly compelling story that is deeply rooted in place....An affecting work of art." —The Thomas Wolfe Award Committee
“Tense and atmospheric, this novel is set in Depression-era North Carolina but confronts a number of issues that are relevant today.….The book brilliantly takes readers back to a bygone era while subtly showing that it is an era whose darkness could soon fall again.” —Indie Next
“This small-press gem…is filled with the most beautiful prose I read this year, and is surely one of the most confident, mature debut novels of the century so far...A gorgeous, creepy Southern Gothic tale set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina at the tail end of the Great Depression. The sense of place is visceral, and the characterization is masterful.” —Chicago Review of Books
“Not since Cold Mountain, Cataloochee or Serena have I read such convincing and transporting Appalachian prose, where so much attention is paid to surroundings, landscapes...A sublime achievement.” —Smoky Mountain News
“Breathtaking…. A combustible tale about the conflicts that arise when the past meets the future. It is about the collisions that occur when outsiders—even the well-meaning ones—impose changes upon insiders.” —Appalachian Heritage
“Prose as starkly beautiful as the Depression-era mountain landscape her characters inhabit.” —Amy Greene, author of Long Man and Bloodroot
“Every now and then you find a book that is so enthralling and live with characters that when it begins to build suspense you find yourself breathless as you read. The story unfolds and moves like an express train. This one is a winner!” —Robert Bausch, author Far as the Eye Can See
“Conjures the past while speaking to the present...An absorbing, twisty, suspenseful story of a couple’s rupturing marriage in a time and place wracked by change.” —Kim Church, author of Byrd
“In Julia Franks’ hands this story about a marriage and a place expands beyond all confines and into something as gripping and as haunting as a fever dream.” —Michelle Wildgen, author of You’re Not You
“This is a wonderful book….Over the Plain Houses is worthy of both our wonder and our admiration.” —The Georgia Author of the Year Committee
“Electrifying…. Franks’s chilling prose evokes rural Southerners’ isolation and distrust of outsiders, and the dangers inherent in a woman’s desire to flee her marriage and control her own body.” —Anjali Enjeti in Atlanta Magazine
“Dealing with such issues as the government’s role in the lives of individuals, the responsibility of humans toward the environment, and the place of women within their communities, the book feels at times remarkably contemporary.” —Electric Lit
“Mesmerizing.” —Southern Literary Review

From the Publisher

03/01/2016
This riveting debut novel is both a portrait of a dysfunctional marriage and the tale of one woman's journey to freedom and redemption. Set in the mountains of North Carolina in 1939, it introduces Irenie Lambey, who is trapped in a destructive relationship with husband Brodis. While a well-respected preacher in his community, Brodis is quickly revealed to be a controlling, violently abusive tyrant in private. Irenie's misery is abated somewhat by the arrival of independent-minded Virginia Furman, an agent for the Department of Agriculture who is sent into the mountains to help families modernize their homes and farms. Through nightly wanderings in the woods and in her friendship with Virginia, Irenie finds happiness and for the first time envisions what her life would be like free of her husband. Eventually, Brodis discovers her trips and convinces himself that she is a witch. Afraid for himself and believing that he is ultimately saving his marriage, Brodis commits an unimaginable act that leaves the entire community reeling. VERDICT Readers who enjoy a seamless blend of drama and historical fiction with an Appalachian flavor such as Harriette Arnow's The Dollmaker will delight in discovering the work of Franks, a promising new writer.—Mariel Pachucki, Maple Valley, WA

Library Journal

2016-02-15
In the mountains of North Carolina, a dour preacher begins to suspect his wife is a witch after she befriends a well-meaning agent from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Set in 1939, Franks' disquieting debut is the story of Irenie Lambey, a restive farm wife living a smaller life than she'd intended. Her husband, Brodis, is a preacher whose fundamentalism prohibits even piano playing, making Irenie's day-to-day existence so claustrophobic that she's taken to sneaking out in the middle of the night for long walks: "the only part of her life that belonged to her alone." Everything changes when Irenie meets Ginny Furman, a USDA agent assigned to teach the local women how to modernize their homes (sample course offering: "Linoleum Makes Easy Cleaning"). Irenie is attracted to Ginny's independence, and the two become friends. But after Brodis learns of Irenie's secret walks, he starts to believe his wife has come under the influence of a diabolical force, resulting in a chain of events that leads to catastrophe. Franks is at her best bringing to life 1930s Appalachia, creating fully drawn characters as idiosyncratic as the language they use (a man is described as a "slope-shouldered do-less," goose bumps are "the all-overs," etc.). She works especially hard to humanize Brodis, taking his religiosity seriously and avoiding caricature. But in going to such great lengths to explain how Brodis came to believe what he believes, she drains the story of some of its energy, focusing too much on his back story and his long-simmering resentments and not quite enough on Irenie's (much more unpredictable) journey. Ultimately, Brodis' role in the novel is much like his role in the marriage: sucking up more oxygen than is his due. Though at times unevenly paced, Franks' debut is a thoughtful exploration of one woman's quest to live life on her own terms.

Kirkus Reviews