“The hardest work I did on Gap Creek was trying to get the voice right,” says Robert Morgan, who has been called the poet laureate of Appalachia. The voice, as it happens, is of seventeen-year-old Julie Harmon. At seventeen, she’s a good girl, and strong, working as hard as a man alongside her father in this gritty, realistic portrayal of life in late-nineteenth-century North Carolina. Morgan starts us off with the depiction of a horrifying illness in the very first chapter. When her younger brother dies, followed a bit later by her father, Julie becomes the head of the family, caring for her mother and sisters until a handsome boy passes through the holler. After a few weeks, she and the boy, Hank, marry and move the distance of a day’s walk to Gap Creek. Since homes are few and far between, they rent a room with a stinky, lewd and mean old widower in exchange for Julie’s serving as the maid and housekeeper. While Hank works at a distant mill, Julie cleans, cooks, tends the fields and the farm animals, splits and hauls wood and even butchers a hog, the rendering of whose fat causes disaster. Written in a voice similar to Cold Mountain, Gap Creek tells the story of a can-do kind of young woman who works so hard it hurts your back to read about it.Morgan portrays the delicate evolution of a marriage, and of a girl trying to define her identity in relation to the union, a timeless theme for sure, but one made more nuanced by the circumstances in which Julie lives. On one level this is a love story, comparable to that of any impoverished but earnest young couple determined to carve out an existence in their world.It’s just that their world is so Darwinian. Julie’s strength and skills are essential in a time and place where the only food you eat is what you can raise or kill yourself; the only shelter you live in is what you build or maintain alone. Medical care is a matter of family knowledge handed down for better or worse from generation to generation. Superstition carries unquestioned curative or destructive power. She and Hank live at the meanest edge of subsistence, with no electricity or running water, and just one injury, illness, or crop failure between death and survival.Morgan use simple descriptions to transport us into Julie’s everyday world:t“I stepped out to the back porch and looked in the yard. Like in any backyard, there was a woodshed and a smokehouse, a clothesline, a path to the toilet on the right, and a path to the spring on the left. And further out there was a barn and hogpen. The washpot was on the trail to the spring. And there was a table and a wooden tub on the trail next to the pot. I looked around the porch and found a washboard and a bucket. And by the water bucket was a cake of Octagon soap.t“I grabbed that bucket and carried several gallons of water from the spring and poured them in the pot. And then I got some kindling and wood from the shed and started a fire under the pot…it took me four trips just to carry Mr. Pendergast’s clothes out to the wash table.”Earnest, loyal and naïve – but not stupid – Julie isn’t daunted by the need to work like a mule. In a metaphor for her resilience, she finds solace in hard work. Hank is weak, a whiner, impulsive, with a bad temper. The two of them weather fire, flood, extortion, swindling, poverty and hunger. She is so much stronger than him, but by the end of the story he changes. The challenges are endless, the struggle Sisyphean. She works and works, yet the problems never slow down, and her effort seemingly pointless in clawing some security from the soil. What, I wonder, was Morgan trying to tell us? He said the book is based on his grandmother, that he wanted to explore what life was like for women who worked so hard for everybody else. Examples of hard work? How about washing and dressing a dead man? Butering a hog? In that sense the story is a portrait of self-sufficiency, and the kind of strength you don’t see so much anymore.There is a primitive rawness to the world in which Julie lives, leaving little indication of divine intervention. In two major scenes she seems deflated by the world’s indifference, given over to an existentialist’s sad musings: t“I sat there on the cold ground feeling that human life didn’t mean a thing in this world. People could be born and they could die, and it didn’t mean a thing…little Masenier was dead. There was nothing we could do about it, and nothing cared except Papa and me. The world was exactly like it had been and would always be, going on about its business.”When Julie “finds religion” it’s more a matter, I think, of finding community with other earnest human beings, and garnering strength from their friendship. She is helped and is grateful, and in this Morgan makes a profound yet subtle affirmation of the essential bond between human beings.In the end, this book is about innate strength, and the courage to make a life, to enjoy carnal and spiritual love, and to battle hard luck and crushing circumstance. I found it inspiring.
I loved this book. I selected it to read because my public library's website said that if you liked "These is My Words", you would like this one. However, between requesting it from there and starting it, I read some Goodreads reviews and thought, ugh, I picked a bummer. Not so! In that light, I want to address some of the negatives I read on this site from other readers.This book is, indeed, written by a man. And it is told from a young woman's perspective. But I found the author to be extremely insightful, and I'm sure if he had used a woman's penname I would never have guessed his gender. Not only does he grasp what it is to be a woman, he has the naïveté of what it is to be a newlywed, young woman, down pat. He also understands how women perceive men, and how the actions of a husband affect a wife. And he showed insight into how one grows in the beginning of marriage. So, as far as I am concerned, the author's gender is not a problem.Another issue I noticed in several reviews is that some readers feel this book is depressing. Now this is going to sound harsh, but it's how I feel. Either they are reading from an unsophisticated, naive or very young perspective, or they read the Cliffs Notes version and didn't get everything out of it they should have. Yes, the main character is this novel faces some terrible times. That's life, and it was certainly how life was at the turn of the 19th century for the average working person in the mountains of America. People on farms then, and similarly now, dealt with death on sometimes a daily basis, at least in some form. And at that time, illness was terrible and people died from things that don't kill normally healthy people now. What apparently was lost on these readers is the strength and perseverance of the main character, Julie. Julie is a powerhouse of courage and hope. She gets handed lemons in life, and she makes lemonade every time, even when she doesn't feel like it. She delights in the small joys of life - such as the blueness of the summer sky and frost on morning grass, and birds in the trees. When she reaches that point that a trial is over, she feels cleansed or strengthened. And no matter what happens or how bad things get, she never gives up, and always clings to hope - whether for herself or for someone she loves. And the book ends with that very sentiment - hope. The last of the concerns expressed by other readers I want to address was the graphic details of some of the events, such as a hog killing and butchering. I did not feel it was indulgent. It was graphic, but why wouldn't it be? I'm not sure hog butchering is something you can effectively sugarcoat. And I doubt that the average reader would grasp what a chore it is for a woman to help with hog killing and butchering without some details. Like other events in the book, it's explained in a manner that makes the reader understand it, and in a way that I think a woman who had to go through it might actually explain it. I'll wrap up by saying one of the things I loved about this book is that it is not terribly romantic, at least in the traditional sense. I don't like books (or movies for that matter) that are fluff. Real life is about people hanging onto each other and relationships through what is described in wedding vows - for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. Julie falls in love with her husband just like so many women do. He is physically attractive to her, he appears to be strong in character, and he appears to be ready to do anything in the world to make her happy. But when he disappoints her, and when life is rough, and that "sickness" and "worse" come into play, they learn how to hang onto each other, and how to make a life together - in spite of differences and difficulties. If you need fluff to make you happy, this book is not for you.
What do You think about Gap Creek (2000)?
Set in South Carolina (roughly) near the end of the 1800's, this is the story of Julie, narrated by Julie. By the time she is 16 or 17, she has seen a lot of suffering and worked very hard. She falls in love with Hank, and they get married. They are both very young, and the first year of their marriage is difficult. The book is really about the marriage, as seen through Julie's eyes. There were times (when Hank gets angry and smacks her) when I was really frustrated and wanted her to just leave the marriage, but then I reflected that a man writing a book set in the late 1800's is not likely to have his heroine ponce off home to her mother in a feminist huff. Once I adjusted my frame of reference, I thought it was an amazing story. It could have been about my great-great grandparents who settled in Eastern Utah about the same time period - minus the flooding. In my Great great grandmother's memoir, she writes about having almost nothing and making shoes for her son out of old boots of her husbands' and not being able to see the stitching because she was crying so hard. As they struggle with life, hardship and sorrow together, both Julie and Hank grow up a lot and learn about how to make their marriage work. While the ending is not a "perfect" happy ending, it is happy and beautifully done.
—Jennifer
This is a difficult book for me to review. It is not one I would recommend for everyone. It takes a certain appreciation for all things literary to enjoy this book; as it is certainly not for the faint of heart. The themes are depressing, even over-the-top sometimes, but rather than make one sad, it tends to elicit an appreciation for the ease and conveniences of our post-modern existence. More than anything, it evokes an empathy for the main character. It is not so much about the plot, but about the writing style for me. It is definitely associated with the realism of post-Civil War literature. The characters have difficult lives, incredible hardships, and almost infuriating personality traits, yet there are redemptive qualities as well as moments of sheer bliss derived solely from nature. The elements of naturalism are reminiscent of romanticism in that the only time Julie is at peace or finds comfort is when she is either alone or in nature.The subtitle is deceiving, because I did not agree it was the story of a marriage, but rather a young woman's tale. The story opens before her marriage, and truthfully,her marriage is just another unfortunate event in her life that leads to further hardships. I did enjoy Morgan's writing style, and plan to read some of his other works for the sake of comparison.
—Sheila Kelley
I loved this book, the imagery was amazing. The newlyweds and their progression through life working a farm under the watchful eye of the owner who is elderly. The flood was frightening and saving the animals was so important and yet they lost so much. The relationships between the characters was good, the old man was interesting and his death made me cry. Julie worked like a dog, even being pregnant. They learned and lived and loved and then lost so much that they needed to start over. This is a book that stays with you and you think about it for a long time. The end gave you hope and yet made you wonder why.
—Book Him Danno
