Customer Reviews

Nowhere Else on Earth

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Set in the swampy, piney backwoods of North Carolina at the close of the Civil War in 1864, Josephine Humphreys' passionate, beautifully written novel evokes a time of struggle and helplessness in a proud insular community whose members trace their ancestry back to the Indians. Derisively dubbed Scuffletown by its "mack" neighbors (Scottish farmers mostly), known as "the settlement" to its inhabitants, the area subsists on turpentine manufacture, which has come to a halt with the war.

Narrator Rhoda Strong recalls those days of upheaval, tragedy and love from the vantagepoint of her middle years. She was 16, daughter of a stalwart Scuffletown woman and an outsider, a Scot, weaned from drinking by his wife and subject to bouts of depression.

As the story opens, Rhoda's mother, Cee, keeps the family inside their one-room, windowless ("because Cee said we're only inside at night and what good is a window then? Just one more thing to lock up.") cabin in the heat of summer to protect them, especially Rhoda's two brothers, from the Home Guard. The Home Guard is made up of "mack" neighbors, determined to spare their own boys by conscripting Scuffletown youth for forced labor at the Confederate forts and salt works.

It's a lawless time in the backcountry and the sadistic head of the Home Guard rules with impunity. After he kills two boys who escaped from the work gangs, Scuffletown's young men take to the woods, under the leadership of Henry Berry Lowrie, a charismatic, focused young man admired by the whole community, secretly loved by Rhoda.

But Cee is adamantly against the match, though she believes Henry "could turn out to be the best we've got. The best we've ever seen." This naturally confuses Rhoda, but her mother explains: "You want an ordinary man with a little flaw. A hurt, a weakness somewhere. Then you can be a helpmeet, and you'll have a bond. That's a man who'll give you some security, in return for what you give him. But what could you do for a man like Henry? What does he need that only you could provide? Nothing."

Cee also worries that Henry's leadership, a boon when times are good, could tear apart the community if he meets the violence they suffer with violence of his own. But since when does a girl ever take her mother's advice on a husband?

Scuffletown doesn't much care who wins the war. They take in deserting or wounded soldiers from both sides, hoping for peace to let them get back to farming, resurrect the turpentine business and maybe build a school.

But eventually Sherman's March brushes Scuffletown, incidentally disrupting the Home Guard's final murdering rampage. But the rampage's aftermath makes Henry a permanent outlaw with a price on his head, leaving Rhoda waiting.

"The first part of my life was over, and the second had not begun. I was drifting and waiting, and even though I had kept myself busy, inside the carcass of a chicken or rolling dough or running out a line of stitches so tiny I couldn't even see them, I felt deeply idle, stopped cold in the middle of my life." Her life resumes but its momentum is largely out of her hands, as her mother had warned.

This is a novel of human forces grown beyond human control - violence breeding violence, feeding on pride, duplicity and vengeance. Though events are tragic, told in Rhoda's voice, it's not tragedy. Humphreys' characters come alive in Rhoda's telling. Their eccentricities, strengths and best moments, even their foibles and weaknesses, call upon her deep affections. Each is an individual; together they form a vital force.

Humphreys' ("Dreams of Sleep," "Rich in Love") writing is rich, earthy and eloquent, permeated with the rhythms of the Deep South. She delivers a clear, compelling story and Rhoda Strong is a winning, vibrant heroine. A wise and romantic novel.

I know that anybody who liked Cold Mountain will love Nowhere Else On Earth. The details here are even more finely written and complex. The wrenching plot builds on the history of a fascinating, underexplored corner of the East Coast--a mostly Lumbee Indian community in North Carolina--and a perspective on the Civil War I had never even pondered before. Surprising and very eye-opening. I just love Josephine Humphrey's knack for beautiful speech, especially the way it reflects the colors and metaphors of Southern talk. At the same time the characters she creates (esp. Rhoda Strong) are so astute about human nature, and so wise, I'm always wishing I could meet them. THose of you who enjoyed Dreams of Sleep and Fireman's Fair will go crazy over this one. I think the historical novel really shows off her strengths as a writer.

Review by Jillian Abbott

Nowhere Else On Earth by Josephine Humphreys is an historical novel with equal emphasis on history and fiction.
In terms of history, the book stays close to known facts. But Humphreys doesn't stop there. In inventing a first person memoir, she creates a subjective, indeed, feminine, history. "Mine is only a single and limited testimony, one woman's version. . ."
There is mischief in her narrator, the curious Rhoda Strong. She is game even to examine and question the true nature of history, racial prejudice and scapegoating, all described in such a way as to render today's incidences of ethnic violence comprehensible: ". . . it wasn't an English that sliced him . . . [it was] his own neighbor! . . . We were neighbor against neighbor."
In fictional terms the characters and events are portrayed with grace, subtly, and depth. Gaps in the story are filled by citing period newspapers. Yet there is an irony here as when, after drawing considerably from the press, Rhoda points out the divergence between the life she actually leads and the one portrayed by the media.
But in creating this personal history, Humphreys is again playing with us. What is the line between the personal and the political?
In the Prologue, supposedly written on November 3, 1890, the feisty and wise Rhoda sets out her intentions and hopes for her narrative and outlines her view on the nature of history, stating that nobody will ever be able to render the story of Scuffletown complete and objective, "just as a soldier can never describe a whole battle - only his piece of it . . ."
In choosing the words, "us and our times" to refer to her story, Humphreys is telling us this is a political work, as much about the society that denied the Scuffletown Indians justice, as it is about one particular Indian woman.
Rhoda is a Lowrie by blood and marriage, and "the Lowries are Indians. The whole place is Indian. And that's the answer to who we are."
But is it? Dr. McCabe, a member of the Scottish Confederate overclass, isn't so sure. He studies Rhoda and her people, measures their heads, and invasively probes their origins. By the second half of the book McCabe is sure there is more to the Lowries than anyone suspects.
As the true origin of the Scuffletown Indians dawns on McCabe, the Civil War is almost over. It is a desperate lawless time. To the Scottish Confederates, the source of their defeat, and all that has gone wrong in their lives, is clear. Their demise is not the result of Union soldiers or their own bad ideas; rather, it is the Lowries and Scuffletown who are responsible.
Again Humphreys uses subjective truth to make her point. McTeer, the brutal Deputy Sheriff and a leader of lynch mobs, spells out why the Lowries are guilty, and even how they differ from respectable white folks: "The noble morals is bred out. Your makeup is what they call bestial . . ."
Using simple prose Humphreys evokes the times in hauntingly powerful images. As the Civil War drags towards its end, and as the defensive gang formed by Rhoda's husband, Henry, nearly matches the Confederate whites in brutality, Scuffletown can't even manage to fill its belly. The inhabitants have neither food nor money, which hardly matters because the stores have no food to sell. Desperation pervades: "There was gunfire every night, everywhere, and just about every farmer's watch dog was shot. Some were eaten."
Yet despite the harsh times, Rhoda is a woman with a great capacity for love, and it is her love for Scuffletown and its people that motivates her. After all, for Rhoda, there is, Nowhere Else On Earth.

In 1864 Scuffletown, many mixed-breed descendants of the native Lumbee Indian Tribe laboriously toil at the turpentine business. The group is extremely poor but work hard to help their families survive. Living nearby are wealthy and powerful Scottish plantation owners who still own black slaves. As the Civil War winds down, the residents of Scuffletown struggle with the Home Guard that conscripts their young males into building for the Confederacy. The Union soldiers are as ugly to town residents. The townsfolk want the war to go away so they can move on with their lives.

For defying the Confederacy, local citizen Henry Lowrie and some other men hide in the nearby swamps to escape his fellow Carolinians wrath. Eventually, Henry turns to robbery to survive and ultimately is accused of murder. As Henry makes love with teenager Rhoda Strong, his gentle father is hung as retribution for Henry's actions. He seeks revenge, but finds time to marry his beloved Rhoda before fleeing from the area during Reconstruction.

NOWHERE ELSE ON EARTH is an incredible accomplishment that showcases the talent of Josephine Humphreys. Rhoda narrates the story line as she looks back over the years to the havoc caused by the Civil War and the Reconstruction on her indigent people. The characters are fully developed especially the interrelationships in which race rules even amidst the Northern Army. The insightful plot provides a unique look at the Civil War that allows readers to grasp the torment yet valor of a small group under siege from all sides. Ms. Humphreys uses historical facts to bring to life a People during an era when the rights of a small minority are trampled.

Harriet Klausner

The grace and style of Nowhere Else on Earth strike you immediately. It is the power that takes your breath away. Early on Josephine Humphreys makes one of her tiny beautiful descriptions; this one of a cypress tree which slowly builds up an island around it by catching dirt from the passing stream. Nowhere Else on Earth is such an island. It is built on layer after layer of evocative descriptions and scenes of such beauty and terror that your heart will ache.

From the first page, Josephine Humphreys' main character, Rhoda Strong, is a sharp, engaging narrator who writes with such a deep yearning that you begin to feel sucked in to the history--swept up in the close society of the Lumbee Indians and the rich tangled land along Drowning Creek. This is a historical novel (and Humphreys nails every detail of the history), but Humphreys wields all of her historical research with a light hand. Perhaps her greatest achievement is evoking something that seems truer than history; she has created not only the thoughts and the dreams, but even the air in which these people lived.

Rhoda Strong (and what an appropriate name that is!) is the heroine of this fictional memoir. Rhoda is a native American living in a Native American settlement in North Carolina as the civil war is winding down. As a young woman in 'Scuffletown' she watches as her brothers join a gang headed by Henry Lowrie. Much to her surprise and her family's horror, she falls in love with Henry. This story of white against red, North against South, and woman against man is terrific. This is a quietly affecting novel. It is moody and its pace is slow and unhurried. A woman whose strength and fortitude are a tribute to our ancestors whether white, red or brown.

As I read the opening pages and started to get Rhoda Strong fixed in my mind, I realized early in the book that all the characters would stick with me through to the end. That is the gift that Josephine Humphreys has for story telling. You inhale and exhale every breath with the characters.

The story of Robeson County, North Carolina and the Lumbee people was opened up in a new light. The Lumbee, a closed subject to the world for countless generations, now are transformed and explained to us: from preferably non-existent in society to real people with real life experiences of happiness, pain, trauma, hardship, and monotony--just like everyone else. The book causes one to look at the heart of those we would rather ignore.

If you love a beautifully written story with a strong central character and plenty of fascinating historic detail, you will enjoy this book. Rhoda's observations about the world around her are sheer poetry and immerse the reader in a remote and unusual community worth knowing about. The other characters are, unfortunately, too numerous and too hastily drawn for the reader to become fully invested in their fates. But if you are a writer, or just love good writing, you will not regret the time you spend in Rhoda's world.

I have heard countless tales about the adventures of HB Lowrie and his brothers, but not until reading Nowhere Else on Earth have I found myself immersed in the little none scenarios that truly make the legend powerful to me on a personal level. In fact, last Sunday afternoon, I took a 2-hour excursion to several landmarks in rural Robeson County where he and Rhoda Strong lived as man and wife until his disappearance in the late 1800s. Reading Humphreys' novel has made me all the more appreciative of my Lumbee heritage.

I was eagar to read this book after living amoung the Lumbee Indians for ten years (and marrying one). This book is wonderfully written and carefully researched. I found it to be so true to the way the " Old Timers" in Robeson County tell the tales of Henry Berry Lowrie and his gang. The discriptions of the area and the feelings of the Lumbee come through loud and clear as Humphreys tells the tale through the eyes of Rhoda Strong Lowrie.