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Gap Creek : a novel / Robert Morgan.
Young Julie Harmon works “hard as a man,” they say, so hard that at times she’s not sure she can stop. People depend on her to slaughter the hogs and nurse the dying. People are weak, and there is so much to do. At just seventeen she marries and moves down into the valley of Gap Creek, where perhaps life will be better. But Julie and Hank’s new life in the valley, in the last years of the nineteenth century, is more complicated than the couple ever imagined. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what to fear most—the fires and floods or the flesh-and-blood grifters, drunks, and busybodies who insinuate themselves into their new life. To survive, they must find out whether love can keep chaos and madness at bay. Their struggles with nature, with work, with the changing century, and with the disappointments and triumphs of their union make Gap Creek a timeless story of a marriage.
Record details
- ISBN: 074322535X (pbk.)
- ISBN: 1565122968
- ISBN: 1565122429
- ISBN: 9781565122963
- ISBN: 0743203631 (pbk.)
- Physical Description: 326 p. ; 23 cm. : ill.
- Edition: 1st ed.
- Publisher: Chapel Hill, N.C. : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1999.
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| Genre: | Historical fiction. Domestic fiction. Bildungsromans. Domestic fiction. Bildungsroman. |
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- 5 of 6 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
- 0 of 0 copies available at Prince Rupert Library.
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- 0 current holds with 6 total copies.
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| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
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- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Monthly Selections - #1 September 1999
Whatever trials Job suffered were nothing compared to the tribulations that befall Julie Harmon Richards. Following the deaths of her younger brother and father, 17-year-old Julie takes one look at 18-year-old Hank Richards and falls in love. Following their marriage a month later, the two move from their North Carolina homes to Gap Creek, South Carolina, where Hank works at a cotton mill and Julie cooks and cleans for a Mr. Pendergast in exchange for room and board. Pendergast is fatally injured trying to rescue his hidden savings during a devastating fire, and Julie, now pregnant, gives all of Pendergast's money to a man who tells her he is the lawyer for the bank that holds the mortgage on the house. Gap Creek floods and the house is ruined. Julie's baby lives only for a few months. Finally, Pendergast's heirs show up, so Hank and Julie, now pregnant again, leave Gap Creek for an uncertain future. Although Morgan, author of The Truest Pleasure (1995), has written better novels, even readers numbed by the seemingly endless series of disasters will respect Julie's strength of character and wish her well. ((Reviewed September 1, 1999)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 1999 September #1
Morgan, the poet laureate of Appalachia (The Truest Pleasure, 1995, etc.) writes with a gritty, elemental candor about a South Carolina couple s tumultuous first year of marriage. Julie, the narrator of this turn-of-the-century tale, begins with the story of the death of her brother, followed by the death of her father, all before she has turned 17. Hank passes by her house one day and, with an abrupt simplicity, proposes matrimony. The two marry and set off for remote Gap Creek, South Carolina, where they make an arrangement with a Mr. Pendergast for living quarters. A crotchety malcontent, Pendergast agrees to put up the pair in exchange for housekeeping and laundry. So, Hank goes off in search of work, and Julie resourceful, indifferently brave, and admirably industrious tends to the difficult Pendergast. In a fire, the landlord is injured, and on his deathbed he begins describing hell to an unruffled Julie. Morgan offers vivid descriptions of killing and butchering a hog, later of plucking and skinning a turkey (Julie does both), as well as of Pendergast s final death and the flood that overtakes the couple s small homestead. Calamity follows calamity: Julie is cheated of her small amount of money, there are threatening sleet and ice storms, and the possible return of Pendergast s heirs is a pervading dread. There s also an earthy description of childbirthing, but when the premature infant dies, Julie and Hank find strength with their church and religion. An ideal example of a regional tale: free of local color, respectful of his people, entirely free of condescension, Morgan offers a gliding, unhurried story of sufferings and hope that is simple and ragged, but never seems alien. This couple s relentless misfortunes are given no more drama than they need, and all the compassion they deserve. Copyright 1999 Kirkus Reviews - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 1999 September #1
This depressing novel tells a grim Appalachian story about love and mishap. By the time Julie meets Hank, she has already seen the tough side of life, but her rugged background doesn't prevent Hank from marrying her and taking her across the state line to South Carolina. There the couple finds work and tries, despite hardship, to make a new life together. A horrific set-up is just the beginning of a very hard first year for the newlyweds, as they survive one personal disaster after another. Morgan (a former Guggenheim fellow and author of the acclaimed The Truest Pleasure) has written a difficult and ultimately disappointing novel. The main characters tend to be rough to the point of mean, the mountain dialog is wooden, and the plot is as drab and harsh as the life being portrayed. Recommended for regional libraries only. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 1999 August #4
The ordinary folk of Appalachia are Morgan's subjects, and here he offers another compassionate tale of poor people enduring brutal working lives and harsh deprivations with stoic dignity. While not as memorable as The Truest Pleasure, this story of a North Carolina mountain girl who marries at 16 and with her new husband goes to live in Gap Valley, over the border in South Carolina, is a quiet tale told with simplicity and tenderness. Julia Harmon has become accustomed to sawing firewood, digging ditches and caring for the livestock on her family's farm while her father dies of consumption. When she marries Hank Richards and begins to keep house for their mean-tempered landlord in Gap Creek, she has no idea of the disasters that await during her first year of marriage. Daily life is hard enough for Julia hauling and then boiling gallons of water to wash clothes, butchering a hog and rendering lard, and scrubbing, preserving and baking. But then a fire envelops the kitchen and fatally burns the landlord, a flood almost destroys the house and outbuildings and ruins all their provisions, and a cold snap kills off everything else. Julia is pregnant and Hank has lost his job, and both have been gulled by sharpies into giving up their tiny savings. Moreover, Julia realizes, Hank is immature, hot-tempered and burdened with a defeatist attitude. Morgan's skill in character delineation is evident in his descriptions of Julia's maturation as she learns to handle her husband's frightening moods and behavior. Most impressive is his description of childbirth, which Julia endures alone. Tragedy follows, but when the young couple seem to have lost everything, a grudging fate finally smiles on them. Morgan's familiarity with all the aspects of rural life, from grueling domestic tasks to labor in the fields and woods, sometimes tempts him into detailed descriptions that verge on the tedious. Yet the narrative immerses the reader in a time, early in this century, and place when five dollars was a fortune, home-made jam a lifesaving gift and the simple act of going to church a step toward survival. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
