Reviewed by Jennifer West
(Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2001)
Clay's Quilt is the story of Clay Sizemore, a young coal miner living in the small Kentucky town of Free Creek, surrounded by the hills of Appalachia.
Anneth, Clay's hard-living mother, was murdered when he was four, leaving him without a father, brother or sister. While Clay is unable to remember much about his mother, he can still find much in his life to love and appreciate: his pious, big-hearted Aunt Easter who raised him, his flighty cousin, Dreama, who is as close to him as a sister, the beauty of the land around him and his work in the Altamont coal mine, which Clay thinks is the most noble profession any man could have.
Clay has also long enjoyed his weekends with his best friend Cake, partying and dancing in the local honky-tonk to the music of local sister Evangeline and her band.
Then Clay meets Evangeline's sister, the beautiful young Alma, who plays the fiddle at Dreama's wedding, and he decides it is time for him to marry and begin his life. Cake resents Clay's relationship with Alma and fears their friendship will change forever. When Clay tries to explain that life is change, and that he is tired of working all week and getting drunk on the weekends, Cake responds "Well, you tell me what else I got to do. That's all I got. What else is they in this life for a man to do, if he don't go to church?"
As Clay moves towards his future, he has much to deal with: Alma's abusive ex-husband and her estrangement from her gospel-singing parents, and a long-lost letter left for him by Anneth, which reveals the story of Clay's real father, a man he is never to meet. Clay has to piece together his past and his memories, much like his great-uncle Paul pieces together scraps of fabric to make a crazy quilt.
The plot is realistic, and the characters are presented honestly and unsentimentally, people who may have few choices in life but can accept these limitations and have a strong sense of home and where they belong. "When I's growing up, a man was more liable to quilt than a woman. That's a fact," Paul tells Clay. "People forget where they from, though."
Clay's Quilt (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2001) is the debut novel by Silas House who works as a rural carrier for the United States Postal Service in Lily, Ky. (population 800). Clay's Quilt received a grant from the Kentucky Arts Council in 1997 and won first place in the 1998 Kentucky chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters fiction competition.
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