Slender Is The Thread: Tales from a Country Law Office [Paperback]

Harry M. Caudill (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Caudill first came to widespread public notice in 1962, with the publication of his passionate and moving treatise on Appalachia, Night Comes to the Cumberlands. In his new book, he returns yet again to his native Eastern Kentucky, but his tone is altogether different now: mellow, sometimes gently elegiac, frequently funny, nearly always charming. Caudill's previous rage at the appalling conditions, past and present, of life in the Southern mountains appears to have evaporated. There's hardly a vestige of the ferocious attack on the coal bosses and failing social institutions that he sustained in the earlier book. The courthouse types and country doctors, who appeared in a far harsher light in Night Comes, now seem sympathetic. Even the incredible massacres engineered by the Kentucky feudists seem somehow less terrible here; more like tall tales from a mythic past. Caudill's gallery of country lawyers, their clients and memorable cases will charm and intrigue his readers.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Mellow, frequently funny, sometimes elegiac.... The gallery of country lawyers, their clients and memorable cases will charm and intrigue Caudill's readers." -- Publishers Weekly

"The descriptions of the dangers and hardships which form part of a Kentucky coal miner's life are moving and make an eloquent appeal for social justice." -- Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky (May 26, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081310811X
• ISBN-13: 978-0813108117
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,142,294 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Slender is the Thread Provides Insight to Country Law Antics, July 11, 2000

By 

Charles Hall (Letcher County, Kentucky) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Slender Is The Thread: Tales from a Country Law Office (Paperback)

Slender is the Thread is an account of the attorney/author Harry M. Caudill's law practice in the Appalachian community of Letcher County, KY. In his book, Caudill relives various cases and political events in his life in this country county. Much of his writing is witty and satirical in dealing with some very serious issues. He writes of corruption in the legal and political system as well as "mountain" ways of dealing with daily problems in the lives of mountain folk. The book provides vivid and colorful accounts allowing the reader to become absorbed in Caudill's words to the point of feeling like you are there. The names of various real persons and politicians in Letcher county are mentioned in the book. The book also provides some very interesting history of Letcher county and Appalachian region of Kentucky. Caudill has written other books like "Night Comes to the Cumberlands" and "Theirs Be the Powers." Caudill is presently dead and his books on Appalachia are very scarce but well worth the extra effort to obtain for reading. I rate "Slender is the Thread" with four stars.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Review of "Slender is the Thread", September 3, 2001

By 

Paul Back (Palm Harbor, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Slender Is The Thread: Tales from a Country Law Office (Paperback)

This book almost tells the reader more than he wants to know. How could crooked politicians, coal and lumber companies take such advantage of a poverty stricken and illiterate people to hold them down like animals (or worse) generation after generation? The stories are fascinating but there is always the underlying sadness of knowing this actually happened and much of it still thrives. Little has changed in 200 years.

4.0 out of 5 stars Old lawyers talkin' bout the good ole' days, March 1, 2005

By 

T. Scott (Morehead, KY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Slender Is The Thread: Tales from a Country Law Office (Paperback)

A string of books by Harry M. Caudill beginning in the early 60's with Night Comes to The Cumberlands kicked down the door for the region. Caudill's biography of a land where economic prosperity for a few had left others with very little ushered the Great Society into Central Appalachia, created the Appalachian Regional Commission, led to the rise of prominent Appalachian politicians like Robert Byrd and Carl D. Perkins, and as some critics would come to say, caused the region to become wholly dependant on Federal money. Slender is the Thread: Tales from a Country Law Office, finds an older Caudill looking fondly on the world he swung the wrecking ball to help destroy, a world of corrupt corporations, corrupt (but often likeable) political bosses and local power players, and a diverse crowd of Appalachian Stereotypes, as he reminisces in a what would most accurately be described as a series of short stories relaying the cases and dealings of himself and other local attorneys, his peers as well as his mentors, in which Caudill peppers with humorous anecdotes.
Caudill takes the title from a phrase used by his friend and colleague John Y. Brown I, a prominent Lexington criminal attorney. Caudill relates how Brown, who had planned on using the title for a book he never got around to writing, reflected on the uncertainty of the legal process, the blind goddess of justice, holding the scales in her hand by a thread, and how perfect justice could be easily corrupted and unbalanced by that slender thread. This theme is what Caudill uses to weave together a series of otherwise unrelated narratives of his experiences in Eastern Kentucky courtrooms and politics. He describes in a vivid storyteller's detail cases in which he wonders how the goddess of blind justice would have looked upon the decision. In one such case, involving an African-American miner who, after being ostracized by the local community for his alleged philandering with some of the younger women in the community, took vengeance by emptying a shotgun on the roof of a house where a party was taking place, a party he wasn't invited too. In the three months between his hearing and his trial, Caudill retells advising his client to make amends with the local black community, who had shown up full force at the hearing to see him off to prison. Caudill advises his client to pay for the damages to the roof, and begin attending church on a regular basis, moving up one pew a week, until, when he reaches the front pew, going to the altar to seek redemption. Caudill relates how that, much to the ire of the judge and prosecuting attorney the black community turned out again, this time to beg that the charges be dropped. After the charges are dropped, of course, the accused returned to his philandering ways, and came home one day to a vengeful wife, who put five .22 shorts into his back. Surviving the incident, the man and his wife subsequently "made up" and he wound up having to pay her fine of $200, which he claimed he was paying for "over forty dollars a shot"...Caudill comments that despite her past frowning on the measure, the goddess of justice somehow managed a smile that day.
Other days leave Caudill less certain. In other incidents, he describes jury tampering in both district and "squire" court, some by parents of involved parties, and other times just because a powerful "boss" enjoyed throwing his weight around. Caudill also questions the nature of the justice when it was in his favor, when he was awarded a third of the considerable estate of a Russian immigrant miner, since his heir lived in the USSR and the only contact that could be made with them was through the Soviet embassy, and the Judge knew that the heir would never see a penny of that money.
As he ventures into politics, Caudill describes machine politics of every sort, vote-buying, pardon-buying, and all other sorts of corruption that would make The Duke's of Hazzard's Boss Hogg smile. Caudill relays tales of a local salesman/land-grabber who, after killing his mistress's husband, buys a hundred-thousand dollar pardon from the governor, who later on, while running for Senator, the former governor asks the pardoned man's help, only to find out that he won't vote or support someone who he believes to be crooked. Caudill concludes his book with tributes to Carl D. Perkins, whom Caudill describes as being revered as almost a saint in Eastern Kentucky; even by his political enemies, and other local lawyers who he felt established the craft in Eastern Kentucky.
While Slender is the Thread is packed with colorful anecdotes about the Eastern Kentucky legal system, Eastern Kentucky lawyers and the people they represent, it contains little sociological "meat" so to speak, no theories or ideas are discussed, and nothing is quoted or even footnoted. Of course, Caudill is not writing for that purpose either. Slender is the Thread reads more like an evening of old lawyers swapping stories than an academic discussion on Appalachia, it's problems, it's people, and even it's legal structure. Unlike in his previous works, Caudill rarely finds outrage in the corruption he describes, at times it seems like he longs for it. While corporate corruption and the condemnation thereof was predominant in Caudill's earlier works, political and sometimes legal corruption doesn't seem to get under the skin of this Appalachian crusader that much.
Slender is the Thread, however, while not containing much sociological meat per say, is, and should be, a book of interest to people in the legal system in Eastern Kentucky and the rest of central Appalachia. With good reason it ranks highly on the suggested Summer Reading list for the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia. Prospective lawyers, politicians, and others who would be interested in practicing their craft in the Appalachian region would do well to read this book, which, although probably not as prevalent, much of the same structure Caudill describes still exists, as recent Federal vote fraud cases in Knott and Pike counties can attest to.