| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| CabinCreek-Kentucky |
Posted - Dec 01 2005 : 1:39:27 PM
i started reading yet another Janice Holt Giles (Kentucky author) book last night .. this one is a novel based loosely on her life as a child growing up in Arkansas.
In the first chapter she is 48 years old and has returned to her 'home town' after being away for many years.
As time passes .. things and people change. She ends the first chapter with this wonderfully thought-provoking statement:
... "Back of the house, had been the wild plum thicket, with the unknown child's grave in its dark depths, where the mourning doves had called so sadly, and the trumpet vines had bloomed so redly.
... Staight back of the house had been the kitchen garden, where Grandfather had raised his fine tomatoes and lettuce, his peas and beans and carrots, and his white, pearly little onions. And then back of the garden had stretched the cotton fields .. as far as a child's eye could see. I have heard Grandfather say that the rows in the big field were a mile long and a mile wid. .. In August they were waist high, the plants heavy with tight-closed bolls, soaking up heat greedily, and slowly, slowly forcing the tight bolls into dryness that would, in October, split and spill out the snow-white fluff which was their reason for growing.
Row upon row of small new houses stretched there now, as straight as the cotton rows had been, as like each other in their sameness and monotony as the cotton bolls had been. It seemed to me that their reason for being must have been somewhat the same .. to house and spill out fluff.
(AND .. here's the part i really like!)
"But even as i thought it i knew i was only grieving with a private and personal grief. I thought how I was a child in this place, and how today I am a middle-aged woman with children who have children of their own, and how none of them have any memories of this place, or of this farm and the home that stood here.
Memories are not immortal.
They die with each remembering mind.
OH .. what a grande book! I highly recommend Janice Holt Giles books. She writes of home and pioneers and farming.
True Friends, Frannie |
| 4 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| country lawyer |
Posted - Jan 02 2006 : 3:50:21 PM
Frannie, If you like this book, I bet it's great. I've read so many of your posts that I feel like you're a friend. So, I ordered it and can't wait to check it out. I'm always looking for new reads. What about music? I'd be interested to know what CD's you have in your player these days?
"All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well."
Julian of Norwich |
| BlueApple |
Posted - Dec 26 2005 : 07:31:13 AM
Thank you for sharing that Frannie....sounds like a wonderful book.
Julia
BlueApple Farm |
| Krisathome |
Posted - Dec 22 2005 : 8:49:37 PM
I haven't heard of this author before, think I will have to check her books out. Thanks for the descriptions of her book. |
| westfork woman |
Posted - Dec 01 2005 : 4:00:12 PM
Frannie, I thought I had read all of JHG's books, well anyway all that were in our library. I will look for this one. Kennie
Greetings from the morning side of the hill. |
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