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WORK TITLE: If the Creek Don’t Rise
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1947
WEBSITE: http://leahweiss.com/
CITY:
STATE: VA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.newsadvance.com/lifestyles/author-spotlight-forest-s-leah-weiss-on-appalachia-romance-and/article_ad71f9b6-81fb-515d-8c76-04c30e28061f.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1947; married (husband deceased).
EDUCATION:Dunbarton College, B.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Worked formerly as a music teacher, freelance magazine article writer, and executive assistant to the headmaster at Virginia Episcopal School, 1991-2015.
AVOCATIONS:Hiking.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Leah Weiss is a Virginia-based writer. Weiss spent her childhood in North Carolina, which is her mother’s birthplace. Her family moved to Virginia, her father’s place of origin, when she was ten. Weiss discovered a love of books as well as a love of music at a young age. She attended college at Dunbarton College in Washington, DC on a piano scholarship. Following graduation, she married and had a son.
Over the next twenty years, she taught music in Virginia and wrote freelance magazine articles. In 1991, Weiss began working as an executive assistant to the headmaster at Virginia Episcopal School, a job she maintained for twenty-four years. While working at VES, Weiss began writing memoirs and fiction and attending writing conferences and workshops. Weiss began taking writing more seriously after her mother and husband died, when she found herself with a lot of free time.
If the Creek Don’t Rise is Weiss’s first book. The idea for the novel arose out of a short story that she penned for a writing contest, and won. The book takes place in the fall of 1970 in Baines Creek, North Carolina, a town high up in the Appalachian Mountains. The story opens with Sadie Blue, a pregnant teen, quickly learning that her fifteen-day-old marriage is not going to be what she had expected. Her new husband, Roy Tupkin, is not the charming man she had been lead to believe, and he has already beaten her up numerous times in their brief marriage. She knows her unborn child deserves a better future than this, but she does not know how she is going to get out of the marriage. The women around Sadie want to help her. Sadie’s grandmother, Gladys, encourages the woman to do something to the man, the same as Gladys did to her own abusive husband, and neighbor Marris drops by regularly, letting Sadie know that she has a person to turn to.
Kate Shaw, an outsider from a bigger city in North Carolina, gives Sadie hope that there is a world outside of Baines Creek, and old Birdie Rocas, the local witch lady, knows how the powers of the mountain plants can protect Sadie. Local preacher Eli Perkins is dedicated to helping Sadie find a way out. Sadie’s supportive community is contrasted with the lack of community experienced by Darlene, a young woman who dances at the local strip clubs. When Darlene goes missing, everyone knows that Ray and his equally terrible friend, Billy, have something to do with the disappearance. In Appalachian country, the behavior of men like Ray and Billy is said to be the result of negligent mothers, women who were too occupied with chasing men that they forgot about their own sons.
When Ray beats Sadie up so badly that the unborn baby is put in danger, the women in Sadie’s life rally together to seek revenge on the man. Though the story is about Sadie, it is told through from the perspectives of the other characters in the novel. Through their voices, we hear their opinions and concerns, and learn each of their back stories. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews described the book as “part gothic, part romance, part heartbreaking Loretta Lynn ballad–Weiss’ tale is a beguiling, compelling read,” while a contributor to Publishers Weekly called it a “tender but powerful debut.” Maya Rodale in NPR website wrote If the Creek Don’t Rise “paints a fascinating, gripping portrait of the interconnected and often unseen ways people help each other get by in this remote Appalachian town” and Alasdair Lees in the Independent Online wrote, “it unfolds like a dark, gripping alt-country ballad.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, July 1, 2017, Stacey Hayman, review of If the Creek Don’t Rise, p. 19.
Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2017, review of If the Creek Don’t Rise.
Publishers Weekly, June 5, 2017, review of If the Creek Don’t Rise, p. 28.
ONLINE
Independent Online, https://www.independent.co.uk/ (August 25, 2017), Alasdair Lees, review of If the Creek Don’t Rise.
NPR, https://www.npr.org/ (August 27, 2017), Maya Rodale, review of If the Creek Don’t Rise.
Author spotlight: Forest's Leah Weiss on Appalachia, romance and heartbreak
CASEY GILLIS Aug 20, 2017 (0)
LNA 08202017 Author spotlight - Leah Weiss
Leah Weiss
Submitted photo
LNA 08202017 Author spotlight - book cover
“If the Creek Don’t Rise” grew out of a 2011 short story author Leah Weiss penned for a writing contest, and won. It centers on a young woman named Sadie Blue, who lives in the fictional Appalachian town of Baines Creek. Stuck in an abusive marriage, Sadie’s life is forever changed when a stranger shows up in town and, according to the book jacket, “knocks things off-kilter.”
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Editor’s note: This is part of a new, occasional series profiling local authors. Want to be featured, or know someone who should be included? Email cgillis@newsadvance.com with suggestions.
Leah Weiss
Book: “If the Creek Don’t Rise”
Bio
Weiss’ debut novel, “If the Creek Don’t Rise,” was accepted by an agent in 2015, the same year she retired from Virginia Episcopal School after 24 years.
“It was serendipitous,” she says, “that I would now have the time to devote to my writing career.”
Weiss spent her early years in North Carolina, not far from the tobacco farm her mother grew up on, before moving with her family to Virginia at the age of 10.
An early love for Nancy Drew books sparked her interest in literature. But when it came time for college, Weiss relied on another talent, attending Dunbarton College in Washington, D.C. on a piano scholarship.
A year after graduating, she got married and gave birth to her son. Over the next 20 years, she taught music and wrote the occasional freelance magazine article before taking a job as executive assistant to the headmaster at VES in the early 1990s.
During her time there, she began writing memoirs and some fiction, while also attending writing conferences and workshops. She wrote a previous novel that didn’t sell before diving into “If the Creek Don’t Rise,” which grew out of a 2011 short story Weiss penned for a writing contest, and won.
It centers on a young woman named Sadie Blue, who lives in the fictional Appalachian town of Baines Creek. Stuck in an abusive marriage, Sadie’s life is forever changed when a stranger shows up in town and, according to the book jacket, “knocks things off-kilter.”
One of Weiss’ favorite reviews of the book so far, from Kirkus, aptly sums her tale up as “…part gothic, part romance, and part heartbreaking Loretta Lynn Ballad.”
Published by Sourcebooks, an independent publisher based outside of Chicago, the novel comes out this week, with a local launch event set for 7 p.m. Tuesday at Forest Library.
For more about Weiss and her work, visit www.leahweiss.com.
According to your bio, you began writing memoirs and fiction while working at VES. What inspired you to start writing more then, as opposed to earlier in your career when you were doing freelance magazine work?
Weiss: My brief freelance work was back in the early ’80s. It wasn’t until 2004 that I began writing as a craft on a dare. Well, not really a dare. More like a strong suggestion from a friend who thought I could write and should write.
I started with a subject close to my heart — memoirs about my mom, Lucy, and her extraordinary, simple life. She was born in 1926, one of 15 children raised without electricity or indoor plumbing on a tobacco farm in the flatlands of North Carolina. Little did I know that in four months she would die of lung cancer and my “interviews” with her would become priceless.
Less than a year later, I lost my long-time love Jim to cancer and found myself with buckets of empty time to fill. I wrote memoirs to heal the pain and honor their lives. Then I segued into short story fiction for a different challenge. It was a dare and death that led me to this late-in-life career.
Could you talk a little more about how your voice and writing evolved, from the novel that didn’t sell to your short story work that did to, finally, “If the Creek Don’t Rise?”
Weiss: It always puzzles me why I “kept on keeping on” when there was so little success at the beginning. To be honest, I was naïve and thought writing would be an easy thing to do. To take lovely words and spin them into a marvelous tale. Good writers make it look effortless.
But I didn’t even know the basic rules about points-of-view or narrative arcs or how to write authentic dialogue. I didn’t understand how the books I loved to read spun the magic.
One habit I began was to enter short-story contests found online or in writing magazines. Those contests had a prompt, word limits and deadlines, and the next month I had access to the winning story I could study. Month after month, my entry didn’t win, but in 2011 it did! That 1,500-word story became the foundation for “If the Creek Don’t Rise.”
How do you think you finally found your voice, which you’ve described as “Southern and musical and best when read aloud?”
Weiss: A big part of my childhood involved music. Everyone in my family played a musical instrument and sang harmony. I studied music in college. I know that beautiful language has an intentional rhythm that draws in the reader. I wanted to write a wonderful story, and I wanted the language that carried that story to be wonderful as well.
As an example, here is the book’s opening lines, beginning with the five-word prompt [from] the 2011 contest: “I struggle to my feet, straighten my back, lift my chin, then he hits me again. This time I fall down and stay down while he counts, …eight, nine, ten.” It is a brutal opening that is softened by its lyricism.
The Southern part comes from my affinity for my North Carolina roots and love of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia. The writing voice came (as all writers can tell you) with practice, practice, practice.
How does your upbringing in North Carolina and, later, Virginia influence your voice and writing style?
Weiss: My mother’s simple upbringing on a farm and her ability to see “rich” where others saw “poor” influenced me. My dad’s people in Virginia were the artists, a granddad who was a violinist, my namesake Leah who designed her clothes and thought nothing of laying a brick patio by herself.
No wonder I’m drawn to hard-working, sacrificing people who make a good life from a little. People who do without before going into debt. People who find beauty and miracles in small things. Undoubtedly, my parents were role models for my characters’ best traits.
What is “If the Creek Don’t Rise” about, and what inspired you to write it?
Weiss: Sharon Day gifted me with a signed copy of “Olive Kitteridge” and I was fascinated by the short-story-format and captivated by the ugly character of Olive. I studied and dissected that book.
In 2014, the year before I retired, I attended my first week-long writing workshop at Wildacres in the mountains of North Carolina. I arrived with an idea that sprang from Sadie’s story. I left with a vision and the decision to set the story in the Blue Mountains I looked at every day at that workshop.
Over the next year, the fictional community of Baines Creek took shape. Sadie Blue is at the heart of that place filled with good and bad souls: the self-doubting preacher, the valley teacher, Sadie’s spiteful granny, her nasty husband Roy and the witchy woman, Birdie.
Each character has his or her own distinct voice told in first person. I like what the Kirkus reviewer wrote about the book: “…part gothic, part romance, and part heartbreaking Loretta Lynn Ballad.” Yes, Miss Loretta is Sadie’s rightful hero.
Could you talk a little bit more about your main character, Sadie, and the predicament she finds herself in?
Weiss: This may sound strange, but I think Sadie Blue’s spirit inhabited me those writing months. I know when I typed the five-word prompt — I struggle to my feet — that Sadie came to mind, clear as day, and I saw her: young, delicate, living in Appalachia, struggling with universal problems as old as those mountains. Oddly, I knew she would be OK but how that would come to be, I didn’t know.
How did you go about shopping the book around once it was finished, and how did you end up at Sourcebooks?
Weiss: The first novel that didn’t sell was sent out to dozens and dozens of agents along with carefully written query letters and baited breath.
This book was different for two reasons. Before I shopped it, I hired a wonderful local editor, Marie Colligan, to help me put the finishing polish on the draft and cut out the deadweight. To that end, we performed surgery on my words for the next six weeks.
Then I had a second stroke of great luck. My dear friend, Kathleen Grissom, a New York Times Best Seller (twice!), asked to see the manuscript. She was between drafts of her second book, and wanted to see what I’d spent the last year working on. She was enthusiastic about the draft and wanted to suggest her agent read it, but I was skeptical there would be interest because Kathy and I write in different genres. But I was (happily) wrong.
Rebecca Gradinger read the manuscript — and saw magic in it. That was in June of 2015, the month I retired from my day job at Virginia Episcopal School. Rebecca and I went to work completing a tighter draft, then yet another draft before the book was shopped to publishing houses. Sourcebooks had been looking for a new Southern voice and they found me.
What does it mean to you to be not just a published author, but part of the Southern fiction genre?
Weiss: To be traditionally published is validating after 13 years spent learning this craft, but equally important is the efforts of a dynamic publishing team. They have opened doors I couldn’t even knock on.
To the second part of your question: I confess that when I write, I don’t think so much about being part of Southern fiction genre as I do developing authentic characters I love (or hate) in a place I care about. I wasn’t creating my Southern voice to be part of something bigger, although that has happened, and it surprised me.
Do you have any other novels in development, or anything you’re working currently working on?
About the time I was finishing “Creek,” I began work on a book set in 1944 in eastern North Carolina. My mother, unwittingly, gave me a piece of little-known history that will serve as the heart of the book, and my research has uncovered more fascinating facts.
But I’m considering diverting from that track and writing another book set in Baines Creek. There will be new characters and some old favorites. I like what is already falling on the page. But the bottom line is, that at age 70, I want to choose carefully how I spend my days. Writing will be a joyful part, and so will participating in book club discussions. And working on home projects. And hiking the mountains I love with my partner, Dave.
In this fragile NOW in time, I am blessed.
ABOUT LEAH
Leah Weiss
CONTACT ME
My roots are deep, simple and southern. They begin in the flat lands of North Carolina where my mama was born, to the mountains of Virginia, home of my daddy’s family, where I’ve lived the last four decades. I was influenced by my mother’s simple upbringing on a farm and her ability to see “rich” where others saw “poor.” My dad’s people were the artists, a granddad who was a violinist, my namesake Leah who designed her clothes and laid a brick patio by herself. Both sides of my family tree were self-sufficient, hard working with humble dreams.
I came to the craft of writing in my mid-fifties and started with a subject close to my heart—memoirs about my mom, Lucy, and her extraordinary, simple life. Then I segued into fiction, attending writing conferences and workshops, haunting bookstores and studying my favorite authors. I cut my writing teeth on a novel that didn’t sell and a string of short stories that did.
Eventually, I found.the writing voice that is reflected in my first published novel. It’s southern and musical and best when read aloud. It is always about people who are self-sufficient and hard working with humble dreams.
Friday, October 6, 2017
Q&A with Leah Weiss
Leah Weiss is the author of the new novel If the Creek Don't Rise, which is set in Appalachia. She spent 24 years as the executive assistant to the headmaster of the Virginia Episcopal School, and she lives in south central Virginia.
Q: You write that the book Olive Kitteridge was an inspiration for this novel’s format. What about that book did you especially appreciate?
A: Olive Kitteridge was an inspiration to me on two counts. The character Olive was dark, complex, flawed and fascinating. You may recognize in some of my characters a similar complexity. But it was the format of the book that inspired me. I saw the chapters as separate short stories that gave private insights into that character. That format made the story more personal.
Q: Did you write the sections in the order in which they appear, or did you move things around as you worked?
A: I did not write my stories in the order they appear. When I decided to write this book, I only had a few pages for four characters: Sadie Blue, Billy Barnhill, Gladys Hicks and Tattler Swann.
Their stories were expanded greatly, and the others came because Sadie needed them or the community needed them to round out an authentic Appalachian tale.
The last character I developed was Marris Jones. I needed her tender heart and sweetness. The one I feared to write was Roy Tupkin’s. I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend time with such a black soul, but I was surprised to discover moments of empathy.
Q: You begin and end the book with chapters from Sadie’s point of view. Do you see her as the main character or more as part of an ensemble?
A: Although Sadie doesn’t appear firm in every chapter (for example, Prudence’s chapter), she is the heart of the book. It is for her that we worry and hope. It is for her that the older women’s wisdom and lessons apply. It is Sadie who causes Kate to reflect on her principles. All along, it is Sadie that we root for (and cheer at the end!).
Q: What do you see as Kate’s role in the story?
A: Kate is “different” come to the mountain. Hope. She’s a fighter looking for purpose, but she had no idea the lessons that await her, especially from her friendships with Birdie and Sadie.
Kate was also a marvelous spiritual sparring partner for Eli Perkins. I loved writing in the dialect and honest voice of these mountain people, but I confess, I needed the mental sparring Kate and Eli provided me, the writer. They were a respite.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I have two projects I’m working on: one set in 1944 in eastern North Carolina, and, more recently, a possible companion book to Creek.
The great Goodreads and Amazon reviews are clear -- you want to hear more about some of these great characters, and if I can, I’d love to oblige you. So once the book tour slows down, I have to decide what I want to commit my time to. I am looking forward to getting to write more. I miss it.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: The research for this book was extensive: Loretta Lynn, moonshine, ginseng hunting, exorcisms, coal mining, hot rods, herbs, southern seminary and Appalachia itself.
I’m happy the book is classified as historical fiction. But only one character is based on someone I knew: Preacher Eli. My Uncle Willis Wilson was a Baptist preacher who could tell a joke with the best of them. I believe his good heart beats in Eli. Sadly, he died two years ago. I think he would have liked Eli.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
If the Creek Don't Rise
Stacey Hayman
Booklist.
113.21 (July 1, 2017): p19.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* If the Creek Don't Rise.
By Leah Weiss.
Aug. 2017. 320p. Sourceboo
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Weiss, Leah: IF THE CREEK DON'T
RISE
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Weiss, Leah IF THE CREEK DON'T RISE Sourcebooks Landmark (Adult Fiction) $15.99 8, 22 ISBN:
978-1-4926-4745-4
Born and raised in Baines Creek, high in the thin air of the Appalachian Mountains, Sadie Blue has been
beaten by her husband, Roy Tupkin, for the last time.She's been married only 15 days, but that's long
enough to realize that Roy is hardly the charmer she thought he was and that she and the baby she has on
the way deserve far better than the likes of him. While Sadie carefully considers how to free herself from
Roy, a new teacher arrives in town, called by Preacher Eli Perkins. Dismissed from her previous post at a
posh girls' boarding school in North Carolina, Kate Shaw is drawn to the isolation and beauty Baines Creek
offers in abundance, which is lucky given the small community's staggering impoverishment, despite a
thriving moonshine trade. Over 6 feet tall, with severely cropped graying hair, 51-year-old Kate is not at all
what Baines Creek expected, but within days she's gathered a cohort of students who thrive under her
nurturing care and befriended Sadie, who yearns to learn how to read; Eli, who finds himself drawn to
Kate's intellect despite her agnosticism; and Birdie, a woman whose understanding of nature protects Kate
from local ne'er-do-wells. Yet the women's friendship cannot stop Roy from battering Sadie, and one day he
goes too far, endangering the baby. Meanwhile, Darlene, a young woman who danced at the local strip club,
has gone missing, and she seems to have had ties to Roy and Sadie. In this, her debut novel, Weiss catches
and weaves together compelling voices from the haunted and haunting interstices of America. Each chapter
is told from a different character's perspective, and they all add new pieces to the puzzle of Roy's dark soul,
Sadie's bittersweet hope, and Darlene's mysterious disappearance. Part gothic, part romance, part
heartbreaking Loretta Lynn ballad--Weiss' tale is a beguiling, compelling read.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Weiss, Leah: IF THE CREEK DON'T RISE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495427951/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=06e9499c.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495427951
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If the Creek Don't Rise
Publishers Weekly.
264.23 (June 5, 2017): p28.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
If the Creek Don't Rise
Leah Weiss. Sourcebooks Landmark, $15.99
trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-4926-4745-4
In this tender but powerful debut, Weiss paints both the bright and the dark in the lives of her fictional
Appalachian community's denizens. It is the fall of 1970 in Baines Creek, N.C., where pregnant teen Sadie
Blue is newly married to her unborn child's father, Rory Tupkin, a bully doesn't hesitate to beat her. Her
grandmother, Gladys Hicks, once had to deal with her own abusive husband and feels that it is up to Sadie
to do the same. Marris Jones is a good-hearted woman who wants to help Sadie, as does Kate Shaw, the
strong-willed teacher new to the mountain, and Birdie Rocas, the witchy woman. Each of these women
bring some good to Sadie's life and to others in the community. Others, like Rory and the preacher's sister,
Prudence Perkins, only bring venom and pain to those around them. All of these and more get a chapter or
two to spin their own tales, while Sadie's story slips in and out, highlighting Weiss's considerable
characterization skills. Agent: Rebecca Gradinger, Fletcher and Co. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"If the Creek Don't Rise." Publishers Weekly, 5 June 2017, p. 28. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495538297/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d2a3171a.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495538297
'If The Creek Don't Rise' Traces Webs Of Hurt And Help
August 27, 20177:00 AM ET
MAYA RODALE
If the Creek Don't Rise
If the Creek Don't Rise
by Leah Weiss
Paperback, 305 pages purchase
Maya Rodale is a best-selling romance author.
Only 15 days into her marriage to Roy Tupkin and Sadie Blue is already regretting it. Baby or no baby, she never should have married a man who beats her for no reason other than singing along to the Loretta Lynn song she loves — and that's not even the worst of it. But Sadie Blue is not the first or the last woman in Baines Creek to deal with a no-good husband. If The Creek Don't Rise, by debut novelist Leah Weiss, paints a fascinating, gripping portrait of the interconnected and often unseen ways people help each other get by in this remote Appalachian town.
Like her granddaughter Sadie Blue, Gladys also had one hell of a husband (but she ... did something about her Walter). And then there's her neighbor Marris who's always dropping by help with a pie or the dishes or unexpected cleanups. Together, these two women know they can't force Sadie Blue to quit her marriage, but they let her know she'll have a place to turn to.
It's the arrival of Kate Shaw, the new teacher from down in the valley, that gives Sadie Blue an idea that there's "a special life" for her that doesn't involve Roy — or maybe it's something darker, maybe it's the disappearance of the mysterious Darlene. After all, everybody knows that no-good Roy and his "shadow" Billy Barnhill had something to do with that girl vanishing.
Weiss steadily builds the tension to an ending you knew was coming — and, let's be honest, probably hoped for — yet it still arrives as a sudden, powerful shock.
The very real threat of danger to all these women — Sadie and Kate, especially — is like a black cloud hovering over the story. Surly and distant Prudence Perkins, sister to the town preacher, thinks: "Even being four, I wondered who defended us girls. I was too shy back then to ask. Now I know — it's nobody." But it's not always nobody. It's women like Marris or teacher Kate, or preacher Eli Perkins, who is relentlessly dedicated to serving his neighbors, especially Sadie: "I've been planting seeds a long time to help her believe in herself," he says at one point. And it's "crazy" old Birdie Rocas, who knows the healing power of the plants and other secrets of the mountain.
In Baines Creek, it's the women who don't have that network of support who run into real trouble — the missing girl, Darlene, or the mothers of bad boys Billy and Roy, whose tough and unforgiving circumstances, we're given to understand, turned these boys into men who can't love even when it comes to a girl like Sadie Blue. Or Gladys.
While If The Creek Don't Rise is Sadie Blue's story, Weiss tells it through the perspectives of those who help — or hurt — her, delving deeply into each character's point of view and backstory and creating a different, perfect voice for each character. Layer upon layer of perspective reveals what happens to Darlene and Sadie Blue, and provides an immersive and deeply emotional reading experience — especially satisfying for readers who love richly drawn characters and a strong sense of place.
Weiss steadily builds the tension to an ending you knew was coming — and, let's be honest, probably hoped for — yet it still arrives as a sudden, powerful shock. It's a shock that lingers, leaving you thinking about what it means to be a strong woman — and what it means to escape.
Weiss, book review: It unfolds like a dark, gripping alt-country ballad
The Appalachia-set fiction debut is loosely a feminist revenge drama, with sadistic men being served rough – and comic – justice by women ground down by misogyny
Alasdair Lees Friday 25 August 2017 08:00 BST
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The Independent Culture
Appalachia, the huge mountainous region stretching across 13 states from southern New York to northern Mississippi – home to a sizeable chunk of America’s white rural poor – occupies a distinctive if culturally under-represented place in that country’s imagination. Populated by around 25 million people, about eight per cent of the US population – many descended from the Scots-Irish settlers who emigrated there in the 18th century – it has inspired works as diverse as John Boorman’s Deliverance and Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring. Like ‘the West’ or ‘the South’, it’s an evocative, mythic space.
Like Daniel Woodrell’s ‘hillbilly noir’ novel Winter’s Bone – adapted into a tremendous backwoods thriller starring a then unknown Jennifer Lawrence – Leah Weiss’s Appalachia-set fiction debut unfolds like a dark, gripping alt-country ballad. Told with a kind of inquisitive gothic realism, the story opens with its heroine, Sadie Blue – a pregnant teenager in the Seventies North Carolina backwater of Baines Creek – being savagely beaten. Only weeks into her marriage to the local lothario-cum-sociopath, she exists in a world where men’s cruelty can be partly explained by them being raised by “mamas who loved men more than their babies”.
Doomed romance, violence and dysfunctional families are grist to the mill in this “piss and vinegar” redneck world, but Weiss wrongfoots expectations early on by moving inside the heads of a range of characters, from the local preacher to a school teacher who moves to the town from the city. Sadie Blue’s story is just one among many in a tale set in what Greil Marcus called “the old, weird America”, in which women are almost as morally compromised as the men.
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As with any writing set in this world, it’s something of a high-wire act fraught with the perils of falling into peckerwood pastiche and caricature. The first-person voices of the town’s populace ring with a vernacular similar to works of Southern fiction by the likes of Cormac McCarthy, but have their own inventive quality, rather than being ensnared in stereotypes. It’s a difficult trick to pull off, particularly for a first-time novelist, and the novel deserves to gain broader, crossover appeal for this alone.
The novel is loosely a feminist revenge drama, with sadistic, hapless men being served rough – and comic – justice by women ground down by misogyny. The ostensible bleakness of that theme is, however, couched in a deadpan wryness that precludes a descent into miserabilist “realism”. The technique of moving into the minds of a cast of different personalities gives the book a filmic, rounded feel. The climax, when it comes, feels earned but doesn’t occur quite as expected. It’s a satisfyingly strange confection.
‘If the Creek Don’t Rise’ by Leah Weiss is published by Sourcebooks Landmark, £11.99