“You can’t stand against a flood, Annie Clyde.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (FEB 25, 2014)

“You can’t stand against a flood, Annie Clyde.” Oh, yes she can. Or at least die trying. A descendant of the native Cherokees, Annie Clyde Dodson has deep-rooted connections to the land of Yuneetah, Tennessee. Long Man, the river that courses through, is tempestuous and moody but the farmers here have learned to corral its powers to make their living off the land. The Tennessee Valley Authority though, has other plans. A dam has been built upstream and in a matter of a few days, Yuneetah will be under water. Annie Clyde is one of the last holdouts. She just can’t up and leave the land which she wanted her daughter, Gracie, to know and love. And as much as her husband has plans to find factory work up north in Michigan, Annie can’t stomach the thought of a stark existence away from the natural surroundings she loves.

As Long Man opens with a setting in the immediate post-Depression era, the town is just a couple of days away from being flooded by the dam’s waters. To make things worse, a steady, heavy rain has been falling and the water levels everywhere rise slowly. Along with Annie and her daughter, Gracie, there’s Annie’s aunt, Silver Ledford, who makes her meager home on top of a high cliff overlooking the valley. Tensions are running high enough as it is; practically everyone has left town with a relocation package but Annie has just managed to show yet another TVA man, Sam Washburn, the door. She does not want to move. To make matters worse — much worse — Gracie, Annie’s daughter, disappears. Could it be the town’s bad boy, Amos, who has taken her? Or is it the equally menacing flood waters that are to blame?

Using the child’s disappearance as a driver for the story, Amy Greene movingly explores the complicated relationships between the town’s various players and also their deep and abiding respect for the land. The hardscrabble countryside comes gloriously alive in her telling and it is the most arresting aspect of Long Man.

The story itself is slow to unwind and lurches forward precariously, often coming to almost a complete halt as Greene outlines relationships and events through a series of flashbacks. While these back-and-forth movements can feel jerky and disorienting, the pace picks up eventually — it is interesting to note that the tension builds slowly along with the rising floodwaters. It’s almost as if Greene were working consciously to have the book’s tempo increase gradually with the drama of the plotline.

While farming itself can be a challenge (one which Greene points out well), Long Man occasionally lapses into too much starry-eyed worship of the vocation’s faithfuls. The romantic visions that Annie Clyde has seem overwrought at times: “She didn’t understand the power company’s reasoning. She didn’t need electric lights when she could see by the sun and moon. She had the spring and the earth to keep her food from spoiling…if a person didn’t come to depend on material things, it wouldn’t hurt to lose them.”

Where Long Man does succeed, is in showing how even the fiercest of people have weak spots that can be chipped away at and weathered over time. The ties that bind can take various shapes and forms and lend themselves to fluidity. Not many can hold their ground when it comes to a rising and powerful flood — whether that change takes the form of raging waters or technical progress. As Greene writes: “The dam would stand in memory, but not of their individual lives. Only of a moment in history.” Even that, you soon realize, is more than what most of us can hope for.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 12 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (February 25, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Amy Greene
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Bloodroot Another dam story: The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels

Bibliography:

• Bloodroot (2010)
• Long Man (February 2014)

“I’ve heard bloodroot’s good for curing croup, and it’s even been used for treating certain kinds of cancer. Some of it we kept for ourselves, to use on poison ivy and warts. I’ve known bloodroot to last in a cool, dark place for up to two years. It will also kill a horse. Daddy told me so last spring, the last time we went up the mountain to dig.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (JAN 21, 2010)

Somewhere, in the darkest and most remote part of Tennessee, lie hollers, ridges, and knolls. Set among them is a place named Bloodroot Mountain, home to Myra and her granny. The mountain gets its name from the bloodroot flowers that grow there. These flowers are so toxic that they can cause death. They are also so curative that they have amazing healing powers.

Myra’s granny comes from a long line of women with special powers – empathics, visionaries, healers and witches. Myra is woven into her family history and the seams of the mountain. She knows every creek and every trail. The mountain smells and essence sustain her and give her life. She is at home there and has known nowhere else nor does she want to leave her home. Bloodroot Mountain is where her heart is.

For the most part, Myra is a good girl and loves her granny. However, she becomes smitten with a teenaged boy named Johnny and all good sense leaves her. Despite the fact that he is no good, she runs off with him and finds herself stuck in a life of despair, abuse and entrapment. She can’t return to Bloodroot Mountain because Johnny has threatened to harm her granny if she leaves.

Myra becomes pregnant and gives birth to twins, Johnny and Laura. A large part of the book is about them. For the first several years of their lives, Myra raises them alone on Bloodroot Mountain after having escaped from Johnny. She doesn’t want anyone to know of their existence for fear they will be taken from her. She does her best to be a loving mother, but when a traumatic event occurs it breaks her already fragile being and she is no longer able to care for herself or her children.

Laura is quiet and reasonable. Johnny is bitter and acts out. They are placed in foster homes by the state while their mother is placed in an insane asylum. Johnny does not last long in foster care and ends up in one detention center after another. Laura is malleable and acts like a “good girl” so as to stir up no tensions.

The novel takes us through about thirty years, from Myra’s childhood to her children’s young adulthood. We go through their high points and low points and are surprised by how the children’s lives intersect with that of their mother’s. The reader is in for many wonderful surprises.

The book is written in a beautifully flowing narrative with shades of magical realism and fantastical imagery. The style works well. Characters in this book are reminiscent of Alice Hoffman’s and even Charles Dickens’. They are looking for redemption, live in the most challenging of conditions and exhibit a true nobility of spirit.

This is a book to be cherished and read slowly, not at one sitting. There is so much beauty in the words that one must take the time to take it all in and let it set slowly like a cautious breath. The words need to be nourished by time and thought. It is a wonderful book that will take you into the land, minds and hearts of characters you will never forget.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 162 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf; 1 edition (January 12, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Amy Greene
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Perhaps, if you like this one you’ll like these: Twisted Tree by Kent Meyers The God of Animals by Eryn Kyle

Bibliography:

• Bloodroot (2010)
• Long Man (February 2014)