Book Review: Clay's Quilt

Clay's Quilt, by Silas House 

    If you want to know Kentucky, you have to live Kentucky.

    But for those born and live outside the commonwealth, know that it has spawned an extraordinary group of native writers. One of these is Silas House, born in Corbin, the heart of Laurel County, and reared in nearby Lily, a town of some 3,000 people. House was schooled at Eastern Kentucky University, and Lousiville's Spalding University. He currently teaches at Berea College.

    So he has a taste for the soul of the state, an ear for its finely turned music and  language, and an eye for the dignity and exuberance of its people.

    That talent is on firm display in Clay's Quilt, the first of three books that showcases the coal country and mountains of Southeastern Kentucky. The trilogy is not a series, although it is related in charcters and story lines.

    In House's debut novel, Clay Sizemore is a good-ol'-boy but a righteous one. He has a job in the coal mines, a hankering for country music, and a rowdy best friend. But he's a youth adrift and uncertain about his future. He yearns to know more about his mother, who died when he was a toddler. But his loyalty to his family, and his sense of place, gives him something to grasp and aspire to. But he struggles to find more.

    The writing in this tale is superb. You can hear the Eastern Kentucky accents in the voices and the setting. House is a master of storytelling, and the book reveals its secrets in every chapter.

    The setting explores the creeks and hollers of the mountains, and the breadth of Eastern Kentucky culture. It's all there: the diverse and beautiful music, the sometimes smothering nature of its religiosity, its joys of home and community, its random, often brutal violence.

    House tells it all without fear or favor. It's his culture, so he knows its strengths and lives with its scars.

    It's a portrait that only an honest and loving native son can paint.