![]() ![]() ![]() "Almarine was bewitched," Granny Younger recalls, "and twerent none of us could holp him. ![]() The Cantrells believe that their mysterious curse dates back to the wild infatuation of Almarine Cantrell with a "witch" known as Red Emmy. It is a tale that begins in the late 19th century with Granny Younger, the midwife, and continues well into the 20th century through several generations of Cantrells it is also a tale deeply rooted in the folk culture of the Appalachians, a tale that in the best tradition of folklore contains "story upon story." They are instead voices from the past, orchestrated by Smith into a chorus that tells the story of the Cantrell family and the odd curse that its members believe to have hung over them. This assignment has been given to her by Professor Bernie Ripman, who "wanted me to expand my consciousness, my tolerance, my depth."īut the voices that speak in "Oral History" are not those that Jennifer expects to hear. She has her tape recorder, and her mission is to make an oral history of her mother's family and its "picturesque old homeplace" on Hoot Owl Mountain. At the beginning of Lee Smith's fifth novel a college student named Jennifer has arrived in Hoot Owl Holler, a tiny, isolated and backward settlement in southwesternmost Virginia. ![]()
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