In the Hope of Rising Again [Paperback]

Helen Scully (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2, 2005

This is the story of the Riants and the Morrows-and the wealth of household help and extended family that make up their circle. As such it is history told through one family's fate: the story of the South, as it rose slowly, unsteadily, from the ruins of the Civil War and stuttered into the twentieth century and the age of speculation and boom. Filled with incisive reflections on death, love, atonement, friendship, race, and most of all, family, In the Hope of Rising Again is the stunning debut of a writer of great insight and imagination.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From the post–Civil War era to the Great Depression, this gently ambitious debut follows a prominent Alabama family through victory and loss, fortune and privation, birth and death. At the novel's heart is Regina Riant, the beloved daughter of larger-than-life Colonel Riant. As owner of the Mobile Chronicle, he teaches her magnanimity: "Having everything is... a great responsibility. We have to show God how grateful we are by sharing what we have, otherwise God or the robbers will take it away." Regina's four buffoonish brothers, however, see their inheritance less as an honor than as a right, and squander it on half-baked schemes. Charles Morrow, Regina's husband, is equally unfocused and lacking confidence, causing her great frustration: "Sleeping was heaven: being awake with him at times annoyed her." Even as her strong Catholic faith sometimes wavers, the one constant in Regina's life is her mostly colorblind relationship with maid Camilla. Scully's light touch, even when tackling the heaviest subjects, paints a sweeping yet subtle saga; her message of resilience is inspiring while eschewing melodrama. "Everything and everyone would fall in the end, and only in such leveling could one discover everything latent: courage, intelligence, heart—the formula for prevailing." This is an impressive historical novel by an author to watch.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Imaginative and enchanting, incisive and engaging, Scully's debut novel is reminiscent of works by the giants of southern fiction. Indeed, the Riants--larger-than-life Colonel Riant, his wife, their four sons, and his daughter, Regina--are the type of doomed, guileless innocents one would expect to encounter in the works of Tennessee Williams rather than from a first-time novelist, yet Scully has admirably created a rich, classic tale of southern families and their inherent survival skills. From the early days of the twentieth century through the Great Depression and beyond, Regina Riant Morrow's life has been a series of triumphs and setbacks. Like that other great southern heroine, Scarlett O'Hara, Regina also endures great losses--her father, her first love, her first child, her husband, her family fortune--but somehow manages to carry on, guided by the wisdom of her servant, Camilla. A tried-and-true scenario, yes, but Scully's sumptuous rendition of life in the Deep South is richly evocative of a place and its people. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade (August 2, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594481032
• ISBN-13: 978-1594481031
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,581,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The long awakening of a Southern Belle, August 23, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Hope of Rising Again (Hardcover)

The heroine of Helen Scully's impressive debut is a conventional daughter of the aristocratic South who possesses a quiet strength, held mostly in reserve. The novel opens with Regina Riant's marriage to Charles Morrow in 1919, after her beloved father's death, and the couple's temporary removal from Mobile, Alabama, to rural Choctaw Bluff, 80 miles away, so that Charles can liquidate some of his lumber business to build them a house in Mobile.

The isolation and boredom soon take their toll on Regina. She craves attention from Charles, but he's increasingly preoccupied, though he tells her nothing, saying only, " `Things might take longer than I originally thought.' ...She had heard him say this so many mornings, her worry evolved into a silent panic she tried to ignore, though not always with success."

Then pregnancy gives her an excuse to send for Camilla, her black maid, who has been with the family for years. With Camilla, as with no one else, she can share her discontent, as well as the long, empty hours.

These first chapters establish Regina as a woman of her time and place. Very much aware of what is expected of her, she presents a confident, cheerful demeanor to her new husband, repressing any doubts. And as the years pass, Regina remains faithful to this ideal and convention of womanhood, a pose that both sustains and hinders her. It gives her a face to present to the world in times of tragedy or embarrassment or consternation, and it leaves her utterly unprepared for her family's financial reversals or her husband's desperation.

As Regina finally escapes back to Mobile (leaving Camilla behind to close up the cabin), the novel drops back in time, to the recent past; her father's long decline, and her own first crucial choice as an adult.

Her father, though he had served as a lieutenant in the Civil War, is known as the Colonel, a mark of respect in a place where the glory of the Confederacy is revered without question. Grown wealthy as owner of the city's daily newspaper, he dotes on his only daughter, his gracious paternalism extending like an umbrella over the family and even the servants.

As Camilla reflects: "There were good whites and there were bad whites." She recalls how the Colonel sent flowers to her daughters' weddings and paid for her doctor visits and her eyeglasses. And: "Regina and her brothers stood in the sun all dressed in black outside the funeral of her mother, Amelia, to hug and kiss her cheek as she left the church."

Regina's mother upholds the family standards. "According to Mother Riant, there was to be no returning to the house at unseemly hours, no throat clearing, no voice raising, no sitting while a woman stood. There was to be no lending or borrowing, no bad breath, betting or blaspheming, no smoking in the dining room or front porch, no adjusting clothes in public, no eating while in motion. No detail of graciousness went overlooked, no chance at attentiveness went unseized, no than-you notes unwritten, no funeral flowers unsent."

From the first page you can feel the sweat beading on your brow, smell the Sunday ham, and embrace the safety of bedrock conventions. So while it may not be surprising that Regina's first love is a Chinese boy who blithely breaks all of Mother Riant's rules (perhaps is not even aware of them), it's completely unexpected when their whirlwind courtship and betrothal is enthusiastically embraced by all her family. And all are dismayed when she breaks off her marriage plans to stay home and nurse her father after a fall, thereby changing the course of her life.

Women's dependency upon men is a major theme. Because Ahlong won't wait, Regina marries a man of her own kind who finds the burden of patriarchy too great. Her four brothers may be feckless wastrels, but they don't have to account to her - or even their declining and terrified mother - for what they do with the Riant money.

This is a novel about loss - the decline of a long-established way of life as the 20th century advances into speeding automobiles and electric washing machines and devastating Depression. For Regina, starting out so full of exuberance and love and serenity, life is a whittling away of possibilities. Each loss forces her to rely a little more heavily on herself, a habit Camilla learned long ago, out of necessity, and a habit her brothers, inheritors of a proud tradition gone dissipated, never learn.

But this is not the sort of novel where the heroine rises to the occasion, which is a bit surprising since Scully, only 26, was inspired by the life of her own great-grandmother. Regina is often infuriatingly immobile, moping on the front porch over her darning or spending weeks lost in books while tasks and calamities mount. But this makes her as real as a recalcitrant friend, and when she rouses herself to an effort, the disappointment of failure is all the more acute.

Scully's complex narrative explores nuances of race, family, culture, religion, and history that seem all the more stirring coming from such a young author. The structure, often moving up to an event, then dropping back to explore what came before, and shifting among points of view throughout, allows a multi-faceted exploration. The prose is graceful and evocative without being flashy, and while there are a few off notes (the interchangeable brothers, both appalling and comic, are sometimes overdone; Camilla, in her wisdom, occasionally steps into stereotype), this is an absorbing and moving novel.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Promising First Novel, October 13, 2004

By 

C. Wilson (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Hope of Rising Again (Hardcover)

I'll dispense with the summary of the novel (others have done it justice) and proceed with my impressions. I tend to put fiction works into one of three categories.

There are the greats, the classics. In southern literature, these are typified by the works of William Faulkner and his modern comparable, Cormac McCarthy. These works pierce the heart of human experience and transcend time by painting unforgettable pictures of real people failing and thriving in the face of real hardship. But it is the insights into the soul of humanity that divide the reader's mind distinctly between the time before and after absorbing the works of these masters.

A step down, but only barely, we find authors like John Irving, who offer us brilliant characters in the midst of more plot-driven stories. The prose is more accessible, but not necessarily more pedestrian. We come away from these works as emotionally impacted as entertained. Readers will know of these authors long after they have expired.

And then there's everything else - the works of the Kings, the Grishams, the Clancys, the Koontz, and on and on. Their books are amusement first, literature second. The plot drives the language and the pace. While there is a place for these works in the world of fiction, they are fleeting. There is no point in rereading, for there are countless others to digest. Reading these books is like going to the movies.

So where does Miss Scully's novel fit into this admittedly simplified literary heirarchy? I can confidently say that "In the Hope of Rising Again" is safely exempted from membership in the latter category. Its prose is too pretty, and its characters are too real. The story gives way to the personalities that are revealed skillfully with grace and subtlety. But is it a classic?

It's too soon to tell. I have only recently closed the book without a bookmark, and the impact has yet to fully sink in. My suspicion, however, is that it will not surpass the mark. But this is no cause for concern. That Scully's work is firmly installed alongside the likes of the creator of Owen Meaney is an admirable achievement. That it is the first novel of woman still in her twenties is enviable and enticing at the same time. I have high hopes for her maturity and anxiously await her next offering.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sweet Hope., January 14, 2006

By 

James Earl Murdoch (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Hope of Rising Again (Paperback)

Helen Scully's "Hope" is an epic slice-of-life novel that spans three generations of a family that you get to know and enjoy.

It starts with Colonel Riant, a man so industrious that he (and his resources), will carry the whole family forward almost for the whole novel. His kindness, goodness, and strength (which found their way into his daughter), also help the family face the trials and tribulations of their lives and times.

I can almost forgive the old Confederate for going around with a walking stick that was partially made from the bone of a Yankee because he was such a loyal family man (a true romantic); he was also a friend to everyone, and he was just plain decent. He is the kind of man us guys would all want to be like (except for that walking stick thing).

This is a family that you can really put your arms around. You are saddened by the fact that the strength of the Colonel does not find a path to his sons and the family fortunes wind down as circumstances take their toll. The Colonel's daughter is such a nice person, such a devout practicing Catholic, routinely going to Mass, but not just that, also opening her home to distant relatives, being such a loyal friend, holding everything together, whatever it takes, no matter what happens.

The story takes place during an age of innocence that is delightful for us to escape to, away from our 911 world if only for as long as it takes for us to read a book. But it is also the time of the Great depression, and this book helps us to live through that along with this family, and to watch them cope through economic disaster, heart wrenching losses, and regular calamities. It is realistic too, as you can see how the depression wears down some of the people while others struggle to find better ways to cope.

My Grandparents were "of age" during this period and it was fun for me to get a clear view into that time period.

There is hope in the story, and when it comes to fruition, it comes as a surprise, and yet the surprise is believable because it had been masterfully foreshadowed. And, I won't give it away.