Molly Petree, orphaned by the Civil War, is by her own definition "a spitfire and a burden. I do not care. My family is a dead family, and this is not my home, for I am a refugee girl."
Raised in the ruins of a once prosperous plantation on Agate Hill in North Carolina, she's a refugee who has no interest in self-pity. To document her headstrong life, she collects its artifacts—her lifelong diaries, letters, poems, songs, newspaper clippings, court records, marbles, rocks, dolls, bones (some human, some not).
When a mysterious benefactor appears out of her father's past to rescue her, teenaged Molly Petree never looks back. Taking what she is offered, she saves herself and then risks everything to hold true to her nature and to true love. She casts aside two prosperous, well-born suitors to marry a dashing—and philandering—mountaineer only to be accused of his murder. The end of Molly Petree's story is as unpredictable and as passionate as her own wide-open heart.
Spanning half a century, Lee Smith's portrait of a fiery Southern woman recalls the South from Reconstruction to the Roaring Twenties—and, in the process, gives us Molly Petree, living and breathing, gripping the reader's arm as the story unfolds.
The Book Geek Says: I've only written fan letters to a handful of authors, but Lee Smith was the first. One summer -- after I decided I was going to Ole Miss graduate school to become a Southern Literature expert which, sadly, never happened -- I read everything Lee Smith had ever written. Then I wrote her. Surprise, surprise, she wrote me back. A three-sentence postcard that's tucked away in News of the Spirit. On Agate Hill made me fall in love with her writing all over again.
Looks like an interesting book, Jana. I might have to check this one out.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, *g*, I'm tagging you. You can find out what for by popping over to my blog.