The Mountains Won't Remember Us: And Other Stories [Hardcover]

Robert Morgan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1992

In this breathtaking collection of stories, celebrated author and poet Robert Morgan portrays the lives and history of a strong-limbed, strong-willed people: the settlers of the Blue Ridge Mountains and their descendants. Struggling to survive in an ancient mountain landscape that alternately thwarts their efforts and infuses them with joy and vitality, Morgan's people undergo the transition from the Indian skirmishesof the post-Revolutionary War era to the trailer parks of the present day.

With one eyo on the land itself and the other on its inhabitants, Morgan poignantly portrays a history of change, of transformation in the landscape, in humanity's relationship to the earth, and in people's relationships with each other. His intimate knowledge of the region he portrays makes this collection a valuable social history. At the same time, Morgan offers a moving theme to that which is universal and eternal-the majestic immutability of the earth and the heroic human struggle to live, love, and create new life. Focusing on one people in one place, Morgan addresses the themes that matter to all people in all places: birth and death, love and loss, joy and sorrow, the necessity for remembrance, and the inevitability of forgetting.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As the title here implies, mountains are indomitable; they exist outside of human history. But the first-person narrators of these 11 stories, shadowed by the peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains, are not to be deterred from declaiming individual "oral histories" that reflect their need for their lives to be remembered. Sometimes their tales intersect with public events, such as the building of a bridge in the 19th century ("Poinsett's Bridge") or the massacre of Indians ("Watershed"). Others concentrate on the strictly personal--a contemporary woman seethes over her husband's infidelity ("Frog Level"), and another, keeping a deathbed vigil, reflects on her retarded great-aunt's life ("Death Crown"). Story by story, Morgan (a poet and author of the fiction collection The Blue Valleys ) reveals how the mountains outreach the progress of each generation. Only in the final work, the title entry, does the narrator come to understand the relationship of the landscape to those who dwell within it and, therefore, the careful equations that balance memory and endurance. Morgan brings authenticity to the varied periods he describes, and he gifts his characters with seeming spontaneity and depth.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A second collection, like Morgan's first (The Blue Valleys, 1989), that's set in the Blue Ridge Mountains and ranges from post- Revolutionary times to the present. It deals mostly with poor whites who are faced with death, betrayal, and greed. The best pieces include a historical element or personal quest and rise above mere local color. The title story concerns an old woman in a nursing home who has lost a foot. She's lived through two marriages, but near the end of her life she's drawn to search out the facts surrounding the death of her first fianc‚e in the war. Likewise, in ``Death Croon,'' the narrator visits dying Alice. The female narrator was ``Alice's favorite in the family,'' but now the dying woman smells ``like some electric spark, a warm radio,'' and Morgan again vividly splices together past and present instances until Alice reaches the release of ``beautiful death.'' ``Poinsett's Bridge'' is the saga of a chimney-builder who goes to South Carolina to help build a bridge and stays until it's finished--despite flash floods and the mistreatment of paid help and slaves--because of his pride in workmanship and his sense of historical mission. The other pieces too often make too much of nothing: in ``Frog Level,'' a wife enters a local mall and sees her philandering Vietnam-vet husband with yet another woman; the ensuing chase, far too long, becomes a kind of travelogue. In ``The Bullnoser,'' a mother and her grown unemployed child (the narrator) talk about the debt their Daddy left them; the narrator then tries to recoup the family's loss by taking on the white trash who suckered Daddy out of his home--but the story veers off and never quite finds its center. A collection notable mainly for its vivid regionalism. Some of these pieces appeared originally in Epoch, Pembroke Magazine and Southern Review. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 250 pages
• Publisher: Peachtree Publishers (June 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1561450499
• ISBN-13: 978-1561450497
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,282,960 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Chronology of America, March 18, 2001

By 

Elixabeth Bennet "Romance Reader" (Lancaster, SC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Mountains Won't Remember Us: And Other Stories (Hardcover)

Robert Morgan's collection of eleven short stories spans over 200 years of American history. Each story is told in first-person point of view. Five of the stories are told by women, and the narrators range in age from about twelve to late eighties. Several of these stories are so well-written, they are sure to be included in short story anthologies. Morgan varies his style of writing throughout the collection, and he gives glimpses of life in the North Carolina mountains from pre-colonial days to the present. Along the way, he shows that though times may have changed, people remain pretty much the same. Two stories are especially powerful. "Watershed" and "Mack" were two of my favorites. "Watershed" gives a unique look at life in the mountains when settlers were still challenging the Indians over the land. "Mack" is set in the present and is narrated by an elderly man who suffers from a very weak heart. His story focuses on what he has learned from life and from his dog Mack. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has interest an in history, the South, and people in general.