Review: A Parchment of Leaves by S House

A Book Review


A Parchment of Leaves
By Silas House
Published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC
2002
ISBN 1-56512-367-0

A Parchment of Leaves is a story of love, friendship, family and courage in turn-of-the-century Appalachia. House tells this beautiful tale through the eyes and heart of Vine a Cherokee girl who falls in love with Saul a white mill worker.

Leaving her family for the first time she builds her own family in the hollow known as God’s Creek. Her constant struggles to overcome prejudice and find her way in a foreign society with different customs and beliefs is a story of courage and perseverance. As she meets and loves her husband, his family and their neighbors each in their own way you can’t help but feel a part their lively community.

House slowly but surely unfolds the patterns that make a family and a community with characters so real they’ll probably be at the Walmart tonight. Through it all is woven a love of the land and the people so deep that only a native of this region can fully feel it.

I’ve walked the land described in this novel. House paints a verbal portrait of this area as clear as a photograph. When his characters dig in the earth you can smell it.

A Parchment of Leaves does for Appalachian Kentucky what Grapes of Wrath did for the farms of central California. It is without doubt a masterpiece and a treasure.