I was pleasantly surprised by this book, it is number nine in a series but I don't think I'd ever realized that without Goodreads telling me it. My preferred genre is more modern day time with modern day stuff going on. I'm not sure if any of you are familiar with the bluegrass song "Tom Dooley", but it's one of my favorite songs from when my family would get together and jam out to old school music like this.
Because of my familiarity with the song, I picked this book up at a $5 bag sale at the Flint Public Library. I admittedly struggle with books that are set in an older era and in a setting with a dialect, but this book was so easy to get into. There were some word choices I struggled over since I don't read historical fiction or books set in the south but this book overall was so well put together and easy to get through. It only took me a month to read because I wasn't putting in the effort to make it through, had I just sat down and done it I could have easily read through this book in a week. I found the characters to all be unique and well developed and I really love the main character, Pauline. The story was thorough and interesting, and even with knowing the folk song about Tom Dooley, I still enjoyed the twists and turns of the plot.
"A case of law is a chess game for those who make their living at it, and a great sorrow for those who get caught up in its web."
"A man died bravely, doing perhaps the only noble thing he ever achieved in his brutal, useless life. Another fifty years of living would not have improved him, for he had only a minute's worth of courage, and he spent that."
"People will tell this story for a century ... they will sing about it, and spin fanciful tales, and act it out, turning all it's principals into Sunday- school sweethearts and black- hearted villains. It will all be nonsense. At least I remember what was real."
"I advise you not to go hat in hand to any relatives you may have, for your kinfolks will treat you worse than ten strangers ever would, and they'll think themselves charitable while they are doing it."
"Any man who insists on taking up with a beautiful wife ought to pay dearly for the purchase."
"She'd not trouble a doctor to help her do it [birth her baby] when there were midwives a-plenty to be had. What would a man doctor know about bringing babies into the world anyhow?"
"Is it not a wonder that the human race lives on at all? All men give you is pain and sorrow, and I cannot see why any woman would have aught to do with them."
"Never in my life had I felt much of anything for anybody. For me one person was the same as all the rest, and all of them let you down sooner or later. Trusting people was just asking for trouble. I tried to figure out what folk wanted, and I'd give it to them, so long as it got me what I needed, but I never put any feelings into it. It was just a way to get along in this world. Whenever I heard somebody talk about this deep feeling they had for someone they said they loved, I thought I must be missing something, but I didn't know what it was. It never seemed to profit them that had it, though, so I reckoned I was better off without. And maybe they were only fooling themselves, anyhow, for I couldn't see that love made any difference in how they acted - not in the long run."
"People believing it will make it true. That's as close to truth as we ever get this side of heaven."
"Women's anger is different. We burn long and slow, and you may never see the flames, but that doesn't mean it's over."
"She would not be comforted with common sense, so I gave it up, and let her rave."
"She had moved clear into the future, and she'd be sleepwalking until she caught up to it."
"It's funny how easy it is to make people believe what they want to believe or what they are most afraid of."
"Mostly it's easy to tell people what they want to hear. You just figure out what you really think and then say the opposite."
"They loved each other, I suppose, or what passes for love with young and passionate people, whose impulses are not tempered by education or moral guidance. Their lives were without purpose or direction, and so perhaps they became each other's purpose."
"Whatever they felt for one another, that lust that made everything else in the world fade to insignificance: I never felt that. Never did. And I could never quite figure out whether I envied them their transports of sentiment or whether I pitied them, as one would a madman whose delusions blind him to the realities of life. But they died young, and I lived on for decades, ending up revered and prosperous in a mountain mansion, safe from the riptides of emotion that sweep lesser men away to their deaths."
"Ann was like a shooting star in my life, so beautiful it takes your breath away, but I reckon what you really need to find your way in the dark is just a good steady lantern."
"It is dangerous to jest with fools, for they are liable to believe anything."
"She was beautiful, you know. Like having a fairy maiden out of an old ballad come to stay, but you know how those songs end. The fairy always goes back to where she came from. She never stays forever. And after a while it seems like it was all a dream."
"He'd not find a woman like her again - and maybe he'd live longer for the fact of that."
"A man died bravely, doing perhaps the only noble thing he ever achieved in his brutal, useless life. Another fifty years of living would not have improved him, for he had only a minute's worth of courage, and he spent that."
"People will tell this story for a century ... they will sing about it, and spin fanciful tales, and act it out, turning all it's principals into Sunday- school sweethearts and black- hearted villains. It will all be nonsense. At least I remember what was real."
"I advise you not to go hat in hand to any relatives you may have, for your kinfolks will treat you worse than ten strangers ever would, and they'll think themselves charitable while they are doing it."
"Any man who insists on taking up with a beautiful wife ought to pay dearly for the purchase."
"She'd not trouble a doctor to help her do it [birth her baby] when there were midwives a-plenty to be had. What would a man doctor know about bringing babies into the world anyhow?"
"Is it not a wonder that the human race lives on at all? All men give you is pain and sorrow, and I cannot see why any woman would have aught to do with them."
"Never in my life had I felt much of anything for anybody. For me one person was the same as all the rest, and all of them let you down sooner or later. Trusting people was just asking for trouble. I tried to figure out what folk wanted, and I'd give it to them, so long as it got me what I needed, but I never put any feelings into it. It was just a way to get along in this world. Whenever I heard somebody talk about this deep feeling they had for someone they said they loved, I thought I must be missing something, but I didn't know what it was. It never seemed to profit them that had it, though, so I reckoned I was better off without. And maybe they were only fooling themselves, anyhow, for I couldn't see that love made any difference in how they acted - not in the long run."
"People believing it will make it true. That's as close to truth as we ever get this side of heaven."
"Women's anger is different. We burn long and slow, and you may never see the flames, but that doesn't mean it's over."
"She would not be comforted with common sense, so I gave it up, and let her rave."
"She had moved clear into the future, and she'd be sleepwalking until she caught up to it."
"It's funny how easy it is to make people believe what they want to believe or what they are most afraid of."
"Mostly it's easy to tell people what they want to hear. You just figure out what you really think and then say the opposite."
"They loved each other, I suppose, or what passes for love with young and passionate people, whose impulses are not tempered by education or moral guidance. Their lives were without purpose or direction, and so perhaps they became each other's purpose."
"Whatever they felt for one another, that lust that made everything else in the world fade to insignificance: I never felt that. Never did. And I could never quite figure out whether I envied them their transports of sentiment or whether I pitied them, as one would a madman whose delusions blind him to the realities of life. But they died young, and I lived on for decades, ending up revered and prosperous in a mountain mansion, safe from the riptides of emotion that sweep lesser men away to their deaths."
"Ann was like a shooting star in my life, so beautiful it takes your breath away, but I reckon what you really need to find your way in the dark is just a good steady lantern."
"It is dangerous to jest with fools, for they are liable to believe anything."
"She was beautiful, you know. Like having a fairy maiden out of an old ballad come to stay, but you know how those songs end. The fairy always goes back to where she came from. She never stays forever. And after a while it seems like it was all a dream."
"He'd not find a woman like her again - and maybe he'd live longer for the fact of that."
"When I was little, I used to think that if you climbed to the top of the mountain, you could touch it [the moon]. But one night I climbed all the way up the ridge, and when I got there, the moon was as far away as ever. Now, I reckon freedom is like that. You think that if you just go someplace else you could touch it, but when you get there, it will still be a million miles away."
"The Foster women seem to have the power to bewitch a man, like the fairy queen in the old ballads, but sooner or later, he wakes up on a cold hillside, with a handful of dust and ashes, and after that all he wants for the rest of his life is a plain ordinary woman who will share his burdens, instead of a moonshine maiden who gives you dreams and leaves you with nothing."
"I shall go to Wilkes County for good, and I will take care to steer clear of tragedies, so no one will ever think to ask what became of me. The people who live happily ever after - they don't appear in the history books. They just fade away. I reckon that's what happiness is. "
"Doctors, as a rule, do not attend their patients' funerals, and it is for similar reasons that lawyers absent themselves from public executions: it is daunting to have to face one's professional failure squarely in the cold light of day."
"The Foster women seem to have the power to bewitch a man, like the fairy queen in the old ballads, but sooner or later, he wakes up on a cold hillside, with a handful of dust and ashes, and after that all he wants for the rest of his life is a plain ordinary woman who will share his burdens, instead of a moonshine maiden who gives you dreams and leaves you with nothing."
"I shall go to Wilkes County for good, and I will take care to steer clear of tragedies, so no one will ever think to ask what became of me. The people who live happily ever after - they don't appear in the history books. They just fade away. I reckon that's what happiness is. "
"Doctors, as a rule, do not attend their patients' funerals, and it is for similar reasons that lawyers absent themselves from public executions: it is daunting to have to face one's professional failure squarely in the cold light of day."
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