From the bookshelf: Appalachian voices

[carolinayellowdog]

5. Mary Lee Settle's Beulah Quintet

Last edited Thu Apr 10, 2014, 07:35 PM - Edit history (1)

I discovered the series with The Scapegoat (1980) and then read the fifth and final volume The Killing Ground (1982) before going back and reading the first three: Prisons (1956), O Beulah Land (1960), and Know Nothing (1973). If you are interested in trying one without taking on the entire series, I'd recommend choosing based on the period of greatest interest. For a multi-generational multi-volume fictional history of an entire state, I can think of nothing else like it. A brilliant idea, beautifully executed in five volumes, ending in contemporary West Virginia.

E.L. Doctorow's review of The Scapegoat for the New York Times describes the 1912 mine war setting and the use of Mother Jones as a central character.