A Parchment of Leaves - Hardcover

House, Silas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565123670 ISBN 13: 9781565123670

Publisher: Algonquin Books, 2002

Synopsis

When Silas House made his debut with Clay's Quilt last year, it touched a nerve not just in his home state (where it quickly became a bestseller), but all across the country. Glowing reviews-from USA Today (House is letter-perfect with his first novel), to the Philadelphia Inquirer (Compelling. . . . House knows what's important and reminds us of the value of family and home, love and loyalty), to the Mobile Register (Poetic, haunting), and everywhere in between-established him as a writer to watch.

His second novel won't disappoint. Set in 1917, A PARCHMENT OF LEAVES tells the story of Vine, a beautiful Cherokee woman who marries a white man, forsaking her family and their homeland to settle in with his people and make a home in the heart of the mountains. Her mother has strange forebodings that all will not go well, and she's right. Vine is viewed as an outsider, treated with contempt by other townspeople. Add to that her brother-in-law's fixation on her, and Vine's life becomes more complicated than she could have ever imagined. In the violent turn of events that ensues, she learns what it means to forgive others and, most important, how to forgive herself.

As haunting as an old-time ballad, A PARCHMENT OF LEAVES is filled with the imagery, dialect, music, and thrumming life of the Kentucky mountains. For Silas House, whose great-grandmother was Cherokee, this novel is also a tribute to the family whose spirit formed him.

About this title

From the Back Cover

“A beautiful, heartbreaking novel, so vividly imagined and told that it stays with you, powerfully, long after you’ve read it. . . . Silas House writes as if the whole history of his place and people resides within his heart.”
—BRAD WATSON
National Book Award Finalist
Winner of the Award for Special Achievement from the Fellowship of Southern Writers

“A SEAMLESS WORK OF FICTION, entrancing in the manner of a vivid dream . . . The novel is steeped in details of place—the sounds, smells, and quality of light in House’s native Kentucky.”
—Newsday

“An eloquent and moving novel of the Appalachian South from one of her most promising new writers.”
—SHARYN MCCRUMB
Author of The Songcatcher

“Breathtaking for both its beauty and its pain . . . A superb combination of wonder and suffering.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“One of the truest and most exciting new voices in American fiction.”
—ROBERT MORGAN
Author of Gap Creek

From the Inside Flap

It is the early 1900s in rural Kentucky, and young Saul Sullivan is heading up to Redbud Camp to look for work. He is wary but unafraid of the Cherokee girl there whose beauty is said to cause the death of all men who see her. But the minute Saul lays eyes on Vine, he knows she is meant to be his wife. Vine’s mother disapproves of the mixed marriage; Saul’s mother, Esme, has always been ill at ease around the Cherokee people. But once Vine walks into God’s Creek, Saul’s mother and brother Aaron take to her immediately. It quickly becomes clear to Vine, though, that Aaron is obsessed with her. And when Saul leaves God’s Creek for a year to work in another county, the wife he leaves behind will never be the same again. The violence that lies ahead for Vine, will not only test her spirit, but also her ability to forgive—both others and herself. . . .

About this edition

• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1565123670
• ISBN 13: 9781565123670
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288