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Robert Morgan’s “Gap Creek” was an Oprah’s Book Club selection 20 years ago and as such, sold more than a million copies. It’s the center novel in a trilogy that includes “The Truest Vine” (1995) and “The Road from Gap Creek” (2013). And it’s a close, hard look at Appalachian mountain life at the turn of the 19th century, with all the necessary elements of a page-turning read.
Bookended by two deaths, the novel doesn’t shy away from much of anything: backbreaking work, floods and fires, drunks and grifters, deep hunger, literal pennilessness, loneliness, homelessness. Yet it’s a curiously optimistic story, told by a clear-eyed 17-year-old girl/woman used to hard work, loss, and most of all, survival.
There are times when Morgan’s first-person female narration goes a little off-track—but you never doubt his affection and respect for his heroine, nor for his native mountains.
“Gap Creek” is a good read if you’re looking for a way to put your own hard times in perspective. There’s lots to be learned from Julie Harmon, even if you don’t live on Gap Creek. And the last line is one to remember when the way seems hard:
We started walking again.
“Gap Creek” by Robert Morgan. 326 pp. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1999
The story above appears in our January/February 2021 issue.
