Lee Smith: “Fair and Tender Ladies”

Lee Smith – Appalachian novelist extraordinaire – is one of my all-time favorite writers. If you follow StoryWeb closely, you know that I have a soft spot for Appalachian stories. Lee Smith was a key player in the Appalachian Renaissance of the 1970s and 1980s – so it’s fitting that I love her work, too. Now it seems somewhat peculiar to speak of an Appalachian Renaissance, for there are so many excellent writers publishing throughout the region. But in the ’70s and ‘80s, there was precious little literature being published in the mountains.

Lee Smith changed that – and she did so in two ways.

First and most obviously, she wrote first-rate novels and stories about southern Appalachia. Foremost among them is her 1983 novel, Oral History, which on its own nearly defines Appalachian literature. I wrote about this novel in my 1994 book, A Southern Weave of Women: Fiction of the Contemporary South. Other Smith novels – like The Devil’s Dream (1992) and Saving Grace (1995) – focus on particular aspects of Appalachian history and culture: the region’s music and its impact on the development of popular country music and the practice of snake handling.

But without a doubt, my enduring Lee Smith favorite is Fair and Tender Ladies (1988). The story of Ivy Rowe – from her childhood on Blue Star Mountain to her marriage to Oakley and her relationship with her daughter Joli – is a story like no other. As she writes letters to her sister Silvaney and others, her story unfolds so beautifully, so tenderly. I remember when Lee came to Shepherd College as part of the Appalachian Heritage Festival. She knew how much I loved Ivy Rowe and Fair and Tender Ladies. On stage, she read the following passage. It’s taken from a letter the young Ivy writes introducing herself to a new pen pal:

My Chores are many but sometimes we have some fun too, as when we go hunting chestnuts away up on the mountain beyond Pilgrim Knob which we done yesterday, Victor taken us. . . . We start out walking by the tulip tree and the little rocky-clift ther on Pilgrim Knob when the chickens runs but ther we keep rigt on going follering Sugar Fork for a while, you get swallered up in ivy to where it is just like nigt, but direckly you will come out in the clear. You will be so high then it gives you a stitch in your side you have to stop then and rest, and drink some water from Sugar Fork which is little up there and runs so gayly. And so you go along the footpath where the trees grow few and the grass is everywhere like a carpet in the spring but now in winter the grass is all froze and you can feel it crunch down when you step, you can hear it too. We was having a big time crunching it down. When the sun shined on it, it looked like diamond sticks, a million million strong.

In addition to her exquisite writing, Lee Smith has spurred on Appalachian literature in another way as well. She has actively mentored, supported, encouraged, and championed other emerging writers in the region. Through her work at the Hindman Settlement School in Kentucky, she has helped those who couldn’t read or write – such as Florida Slone – learn to put their stories and songs to paper. She has mentored the likes of Lou Crabtree (Sweet Hollow) and Silas House, the author of five powerful novels about Appalachia. In his role as NEH Chair of Appalachian Literature at Berea College, Silas is paying it forward, nurturing another generation of Appalachian writers. I am especially grateful to Lee for being the first reader of my book  Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative. I can’t express how much it meant to me to have one of my favorite writers read the manuscript and give her careful, insightful critique as she has done for so many others.

There are many great stories about Lee as well. I especially love the tale of how she decided to her attention to writing about Appalachia. She had grown up as a town girl in Grundy, Virginia. Her father owned the Ben Franklin dime store there. She knew she wanted to be a writer and began by writing fantastic stories about, as she says, “stewardesses living in Hawaii and evil twins.”

When she left Grundy to go to Hollins College, she began to supplement her required class readings with trips to the library. One day, seemingly at random, she pulled James Still’s outstanding 1940 novel, River of Earth, off the shelf. As she read it, Lee was spellbound – and nearly cried “Eureka!” when she got to the end and discovered that a coal miner and his family were pulling up stakes and moving to Grundy, Virginia. Lee could not believe her small hometown was mentioned in a novel. From then on, she had discovered her material, and she has never looked back.

Want to learn more about Lee Smith? By all means, you must start with her fiction. You can find a comprehensive list on her website. Then take a look at the information about “Good Ol’ Girls,” a musical stage production based partly on Lee’s writing. When you’re ready for more, check out Conversations with Lee Smith, a collection of interviews with Lee, edited by yours truly. Reading the interviews is like sitting on the front porch listening to your long-lost cousin spinning yarns. And of course, all Lee Smith fans are eagerly awaiting her forthcoming memoir, Dimestore, due out this spring.

If you’re ready to explore more stories from Appalachia, check out previous StoryWeb posts on Hazel Dickens’s “Mama’s Hand,” Betty Smith’s ballad singing, Kirk Judd’s “On Cranberry,” George Ella Lyon’s “Where I’m From,” Louise McNeill’s Gauley Mountain, Doug Van Gundy’s “What a Beautiful Jar of Jelly,” Myles Horton’s The Long Haul, and Harriette Arnow’s The DollmakerAnd stay tuned – there will be more Appalachian stories on StoryWeb in the months to come!

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Watch:Watch Barbara Bates Smith bring Ivy Rowe to life in a one-woman play.