- Compare Maggie Underhill to to Ophelia, the character she is playing in in the school presentation of William Shakespeare's "Hamlet."
- How does the subplot involving Tavy and Taw relate to the primary theme(s) of the novel?
- In what ways does the novel explore the liminial state between life and death?
Response
On her own website, author Sharyn McCrumb explains that this novel was originally a series of images in her mind that seemed to be unrelated, but all were part of a story. She discussed the images with a friend, who is a professor of folklore. This friend made her see that the images all related to the liminal state between life and death. The theme of liminality between life and death is illustrated through several prominent examples in the text.
In a broad sense, the Appalachian region portrayed is on the edge of civilization. Dark Hollow, TN, is located in Wake County. The residents make their own clothes and live off of the land that they own. At the same time, the nearby city of Johnson City has fast food restaurants and nearby Erwin has factory jobs. Laura Bruce’s hometown of Roanoke, VA, is only four hours east of Dark Hollow, but she did not know of the “other world…in the hills that surrounded Roanoke” (18) until later in life. The remoteness of Dark Hollow forces the women to mostly marry in their late teens and live “within hailing distance of parents or in-laws. Economic hardship makes jobs in the nearby cities unattainable for these unskilled women, leaving them "one man away from welfare." (23) The geographic separation of Dark Hollow from nearby cities leaves its residents in their simple lives and not moving forward with technological advances. As the story progresses, the pollution of the Little Dove River and the plight of the chestnut trees are used as symbols to illustrate that the area is not so far from civilization that it cannot be affected by the advances of the outside world.
In varying degrees, it is fairly common for people of Scotch/Irish descent to have “the sight,” speak to the dead, and know things they should not know. In spite of not having a phone, Nora Bonesteel always about deaths in the community before anyone made the two mile trek up the mountain road to her home to tell her. Ghosts of the people who died visit her shortly after their passing. She also knows many other things about the people of the community near her. She knows who is pregnant, when to protect plants from frost, and where missing items will be found. (13) This gift puts Nora between the world of the living and the dead and the world of the conscious and subconscious mind.
Nora Bonesteel has a pet groundhog that she says “tries on death until the spring comes.” (34) True hibernation is a state in which an animal goes into a period of inactivity and its body slows down to conserve energy during the winter months during which there is little food to sustain that animal’s life. Groundhogs are one of the few animals that enter true winter hibernation. Nora explains to Laura that her pet groundhog still hibernates, because “it’s nature’s way.”
Maggie Underhill is the daughter in the family that is killed in the first pages of the book. Her parents and younger brother are murdered by her older brother, who then kills himself. Maggie is soon visited by the spirit of her older brother in a series of phone calls through which he guides her through events that occur after the tragedy of his actions.
Click here for more information on author Sharyn McCrumb and her other literary works.
