The Saints of Swallow Hill
Fiction
Kensington Books
January 25, 2022
Advance reader copy
384
Free from publisher
In the dense pine forests of North Carolina, turpentiners labor, hacking into tree trunks to draw out the sticky sap that gives the Tar Heel State its nickname, and hauling the resin to stills to be refined. Among them is Rae Lynn Cobb and her husband, Warren, who run a small turpentine farm together.
Though the work is hard and often dangerous, Rae Lynn, who spent her childhood in an orphanage, is thankful for it—and for her kind if careless husband. When Warren falls victim to his own negligence, Rae Lynn undertakes a desperate act of mercy. To keep herself from jail, she disguises herself as a man named "Ray" and heads to the only place she can think of that might offer anonymity, a turpentine camp in Georgia named Swallow Hill.
Swallow Hill is no easy haven. The camp is isolated and squalid, and commissary owner Otis Riddle takes out his frustrations on his browbeaten wife, Cornelia. Although Rae Lynn works tirelessly, she becomes a target for Crow, the ever-watchful woods rider who checks each laborer’s tally. Delwood Reese, who’s come to Swallow Hill hoping for his own redemption, offers “Ray” a small measure of protection, and is determined to improve their conditions. As Rae Lynn forges a deeper friendship with both Del and Cornelia, she begins to envision a path out of the camp. But she will have to come to terms with her past, with all its pain and beauty, before she can open herself to a new life and seize the chance to begin again.
My review:
I'm not usually one to always believe the comparisons when it comes to books, but this one is said to be Where the Crawdads Sing meets The Four Winds, and I think that is a pretty apt description. It takes its lush descriptions of place from Crawdads (minus the mystery part) and the time during the Depression from Four Winds. I will say that I enjoyed the characters in this story much more than Four Winds (ugh, don't get me started on that insufferable daughter!). These characters were really well developed and I found myself rooting for them as they endured their intolerable situations. This was not an easy read, but the prospect of a semi happy (as much as could be in those times) ending drove me to compulsively read on. The other thing I found fascinating was the derivation of the term Tar Heel, which is what my state of NC is known as. I remember when we first moved to the state trying to figure out what in the world a Tar Heel was, and while finding a vague answer at the time, this book does a much better job of explaining it all! I seriously never knew what came from a pine tree other than all those insufferable needles that drop in my pool! I thought the pacing of this story was perfect, the writing was lovely and not overly rambling, and the ending did leave me satisfied.
While not an upbeat story, this historical fiction combined a great sense of place and time with wonderful characters. It's a must read for those interested in novels set during the Great Depression, and will be especially enlightening for those in the southeastern states.
