Tells the stories of individual residents of a small, isolated Appalachian town

Small Caucasian Woman: Stories

Literature & Fiction

Palencia, Elaine Fowler

United States

Univ of Missouri Pr

“Some people are born to gossip; some people achieve mastery of it through hard work; and some have gossiping thrust upon them, by being in the right place at the right time.”
Set in the backcountry landscape of Blue Valley, Kentucky, Elaine Fowler Palencia’s Small Caucasian Womanoffers a collection of related, short stories about a small-town fueled by gossip. Palencia describes hardships – such as alienation and depression – that accompany life in a largely overlooked region. Among these common themes are also stories of hope and change in an area that always stays the same. Palencia’s honest interpretation of country life will entice readers of all avenues, especially those who know what it’s like to grow up in a community where everybody knows everybody.

Small Caucasian Woman: Stories (Volume 1)

University of Missouri

In Brier Country, Elaine Fowler Palencia returns to Blue Valley, the fictional locale in the Appalachian foothills of eastern Kentucky that is the focus of her highly acclaimed Small Caucasian Woman. Blue Valley is a small community—a town where little goes on "except what is left out of history books"—and most of its residents are "brierhoppers," as folks from Appalachia are sometimes known north of the Ohio River. Reuniting readers with characters from her first collection, Palencia continues to map her uniquely poignant territory in these sixteen new stories.
A criminal on the lam in "Waiting for Snow" tries to make up for past transgressions even as the police are closing in. Years later, in "Emus," the retired cop who was part of the chase clears his own conscience. In "Guard Your Man," a high school physical-education teacher works to bring back women's basketball, which was outlawed for forty years in Kentucky. Through the eyes and minds of these various characters, we learn that people in Blue Valley are far more engaging and complex than they originally appear to be.
We also learn that Blue Valley has a small college. It is here we meet Julia Bone, a haughty professor from Alabama who feels she is too good to live in Kentucky; here we eavesdrop on the private journal kept by Fenwick Radnor, the dictatorial college president; and here we search the science building for a set of embalmed fetuses that haunts the dreams of a former resident of Blue Valley. Throughout these new tales, the supernatural realm hovers behind the curtain of daily life, as in the stories of a nurse who performs a secret function in a city hospital, the eerie automobile journey of an aging salesman making his last trip, and the power of a grouping of trees known as the Three Graces.
Praised by James McConkey as "unique and yet part of an American tradition that includes . . . the fiction of Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor, and reaches back to Mark Twain," Palencia is known for her trademark wit, ear for dialogue, and sense of place—all of which make Brier Country a welcome addition to the folklore of Blue Valley.

Brier Country: Stories from Blue Valley (Volume 1)

When John M. Douthit of Appalachian Georgia enlisted as a private in Fannin County's Fifty-Second Volunteer Infantry Regiment on March 4, 1862 and marched with neighbors to train at Camp McDonald, he left behind a pregnant wife, an eighteen-month-old daughter, and a small farm. A precious cache of family letters traces him to eastern Tennessee, where he served south of Cumberland Gap; through the failed Confederate invasion of Kentucky; on the march to join Bragg's forces near Murfreesboro, Tennessee; and finally, to the defense of Vicksburg, where John and his fellow North Georgians arrived during the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou. At Vicksburg, where John's younger brother Warren Davis Douthit joined him, five North Georgia regiments solidified into what became known as the Barton-Stovall Brigade. The Brigade manned the water batteries at Warrenton, Mississippi, fought in the Battle of Champion Hill, and afterward was bottled up in the siege of Vicksburg. This book searches out the fate of the two men, never known by their immediate family, and also examines the effect of the war on the home front. In this well-researched and reasoned narrative, the common soldier is elevated to tragic hero. The author, John's great-great granddaughter and a descendant of the daughter who was born while he was away and whom he never saw, includes family stories and her own mother's memories of John's wife Martha.

On Rising Ground

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Mercer University Press

Taking the Train: Poems

Poetry

Green River Writers/Grex Pr

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Books by Palencia, Elaine Fowler