At Home in the Heart of Appalachia

Description

Review John O'Brien's scrupulous, exactingly honest memoir opens in 1995 on the day of his father's funeral in Philadelphia, which he will not attend because "eighteen years of silence stand between us [and] my presence would only add to family stress." Instead, he chooses to visit his father's birthplace in Piedmont, West Virginia, and consider the roots of their estrangement in the region that indelibly shaped them both. In a subtle, ruminative text, the author interweaves his memories with a history of Appalachia that debunks many myths. (The Hatfield-McCoy "feud," for example, had more to do with dislocation caused by the coal and timber industries than any native blood lust.) Much of the book limns O'Brien's first few years in Franklin, a small town two hours south of Piedmont where he and his family settled in 1984. A bitter conflict involving the Woodlands Institute, an educational establishment that locals feared was trying to "take over" their school system, becomes a paradigm for O'Brien of the way affluent outsiders have always stereotyped Appalachia as a primitive backwater peopled by hillbillies, while the residents resisted attempts by strangers to "improve" their home ground with a stubborn fatalism about the possibility of (or need for) change. The author's own conflicts with his parents--who were skeptical when he went to college and horrified when he admitted to seeing a psychiatrist--reveal a provincialism and narrow-mindedness he does not deny are common in the region. At the same time, he affirms the joy of living close to nature and honors the "plainspoken, empathetic, and genuine" native character. Because his complex work doesn't trade in stock nostrums or easy sentimentality, the portrait that emerges of a people and a place rings deeply true. --Wendy Smith Read more From Publishers Weekly "I have spent my life leaving Appalachia and coming home again," writes John O'Brien in his first book, At Home in the Heart of Appalachia. Born in Philadelphia to a father who'd fled a painful Appalachian childhood, O'Brien moved back to West Virginia as an adult. Upon his estranged father's death in 1995, O'Brien did not attend the funeral; instead, he further explored his family's roots and his own experience, yielding this memoir. Dealing deftly in fact and perception, he recalls his childhood confusion about his origins. His family considered itself West Virginian; outsiders called them Appalachian: "[i]n time I would learn that Appalachia was an imaginary place and that being Appalachian was imaginary but terribly damaging." In lovely, sensitive, frank prose, O'Brien portrays a West Virginia beset by coal-mining tragedies and poverty, blessed with lush beauty and rich mountain culture. (Knopf, $25 320p ISBN 0-1-0)Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Read more See all Editorial Reviews

Features:

Product Details:

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (June 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394564510
• ISBN-13: 17
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds

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