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TO MIZ DIXIE BELLE'S SOUTHERN BOOK CORNER
I'm so glad you could drop by. I love reading books and I enjoy sharing my thoughts with my friends(just like you) about the books that I've read. I don't recall the exact moment that my intense love affair with books began but I think it was around the age of eight or nine. I do recall that Little Women by Louisa May Alcott was the first book that made a lasting impression on me. And of course, the moment that I finished Little Women I couldn't wait to read her next novel Little Men. From that point, I was hooked on books and I've always been indebted to Miss Alcott. Since books have always been such an important part of my life, I thought it only fitting to include this topic among my pages. Books have that magical way of transporting us into many dimensions. They can take us back in time or into the future. They can make us laugh one moment and then just two pages later we're dragging out the tissues to wipe the tears from our eyes. But most of all, books make us use our imaginations like no other media source.
This issue of Southern Book Corner is spotlighted on, Wilma Dykeman, a great writer, novelest, historian and environmentalist who was born and raised in the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina.
Ms. Dykeman, an award-winning author of 18 books, is best known for her writings about the Appalachian South. Her works are filled with local dialects and knowledge, and never fail to nuture and encourage the mind and spirit. It is said that she has devoted her career to creating stories and characters that center on social history and changing world views.
Ms. Dykeman's works have also appeared in such periodicals as Harper's Magazine, The New Republic ,and The New York Times. In 1998, she was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.
As a writer, one of the many outstanding talents of Ms. Dykeman is that she skillfully uses her characters to decry human selfishness and social injustice within the community, state, and country. And she does it in such a way that her prose reads almost like a poem. And to my thinking, none of her works displays this talent better than her first novel, The Tall Woman published in 1962.
Ms. Dykeman's character, Lydia, is a beautifully written example of today's coinage of the term "steel magnolia" of how one woman's care for nature's bounty and care for future generations can be accomplished by sheer will, determination, and an unselfish love.
The old adage, "a tall woman cast a long shadow," shows in Lydia that one person casts a long shawdow desprite her all too short life.
Following are some quotes from Ms. Dykeman's "The Tall Woman" that are especially poingant for me and also illustrates her ability to make prose into a poem.
"Fresh, sweet smells of late spring rode on the gentle wind. Bees used the air like a giant room. Above her and beyond her and all around, the mountains were stirring with life, thrusting up shoots and leaves and blossoms, feeding roots, soaking up pockets of spring rain for dry times ahead, yeilding small animals that had burrowed away for winter. Lydia felt the surge of life----as she had felt it in previous springs. No matter who came or went, what crops were planted or unplanted, who was meted justice or injustice, this would always return. She felt as small as an insect curled in the leaf at her foot, knowing that all of this went forward without knowledge of her. And yet she felt large, too, as great and grand as the green peak of the mountain looming above her because she was a part of it all. She was here and now and alive!"
"Water is a living thing: it is life itself. In it life began. As a river is born deep inside the earth in springs that gather into streams and join to become a river, so people's lives gather and into families and communities and become part of the river of history."
And by the way, I suggest you have a Kleenex handy, especially during the last chapter of the book.
Other Works by Wilma Dykeman
"The Far Family"
For more information of Ms. Dykeman, please check out these links:
http://www.ncwriters.org/wdykeman.htm |
The book opens with the main character, Lydia Moore, soon to be the young bride of Mark McQueen, in the rugged and sparsely populated wilderness of Western North Carolina just prior to the War Between the States. We follow the ebb and flow of her life, when her family is divided just as the nation is divided, through her efforts to rebuild her family and community during the reconstruction period and beyond.
