Where The Water-Dogs Laughed: The Story of the Great Bear [Hardcover]

Charles F. Price (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: High Country Publishers (November 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932158502
• ISBN-13: 978-1932158502
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,528,256 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Storytelling at its best, raised to the level of myth and timelessness, December 31, 2006

By 

Betty Cloer Wallace (TUCKASEEGEE CHRONICLES) ... (Western North Carolina) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Where The Water-Dogs Laughed: The Story of the Great Bear (Hardcover)

With this novel Price brings to a close a remarkable multigenerational saga set in the mountains of North Carolina, a remote corner of the world in which the brutal aftermath of the Civil War is up-close-and-personal and seemingly without end. But what an end to this four-volume feast of the senses! Price engages the reader in the rawness of human nature and lets us rise to the level of myth and timelessness, right alongside his characters, touching the best and worst in all of us and causing us to think about our own need for finding meaning and seeking redemption. Price skillfully and sensitively lets us share in the journeys of both Hamby McFee and the Great Bear; and his drawing us inside the minds of both of them, raised to the level of myth, is storytelling at its very best. Supporting the central story of Hamby and the Great Bear are richly textured themes that create the fabric of the mountains and her people---environmental, economic, societal, political, spiritual---and never once does Price lapse into a gratuitous or stereotypical treatment of these themes. These books will linger in your mind long after you read the last page, and I recommend you treat yourself to a real feast by reading all four novels in the order they were written: Hiwassee, Freedom's Altar, The Cock's Spur, and Where the Water-Dogs Laughed.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book about Grace, December 6, 2003

By 

Ruth P. Price "Ruth Price" (Burnsville, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Where The Water-Dogs Laughed: The Story of the Great Bear (Hardcover)

This book is about grace. Where the Water-dogs Laughed is peopled with characters so real I experienced their triumphs, failures, and thoughts as my own. Set in the late 1800's in the mountains of Western North Carolina, the characters are engaged in struggles that echo many of today's troubles including the devastation of the environment, the need to make money from the land, domestic emotional abuse, and hard economic times. The Great Bear and Cattywampus Dog are as real as the people. The Cherokee belief about the covenant between bears and man is told through the Great Bear. I found this a surprising approach and became intrigued with the Bear's voice and experience of his world. My favorite character is Hamby McFee, an ex-slave, who takes over the book from beginning to end. He struggles with feeling separated from others and yet bound to them through their shared place in the Hiwassee valley. His desire to maintain his integrity by protecting himself from the judgment of others with a hard, bitter attitude results in a loneliness I found familiar. Hamby is one of the most original characters I've encountered and I found myself wanting to defend him whenever he was misunderstood by the other characters. Price incorporates the romance of his own grandparents, Lily Carter and Will Price, into the story. Their courtship is formal and old-fashioned and ultimately inspiring as they overcome the obstacles laid out for them by Will's adopted father. Another love relationship takes place between Absalom Middleton and Cassandra Weatherby; Price does an incredible job of evoking an erotic, passionate relationship without ever depicting a sexual encounter. Adding balance, humor, and grace is Irish Bill Moore who is as rooted to the land as the Great Bear. Like an elf who lives in the forest he emerges from the mountain mists beating his Civil War drum, gaily teasing the wife he adores, mourning his two sons who are lost to a typhoid epidemic, longing for his youth, and wisely seeing the ability of man and Mother Earth to endure. This book is gritty, true, and full of the struggles of daily existence and it raises us up to taste something larger than ourselves.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Story of the Great Bear, June 24, 2009

By 

Luci Mott (Boone, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Where The Water-Dogs Laughed: The Story of the Great Bear (Hardcover)

The characters make this book. Hamby McFee is a racially mixed man whose experience has left him embittered toward all mankind. That doesn't keep him from giving the reader chuckles from his wry comments - many internal. The nonhuman characters, Cattywampus Dog, The Great Bear of the title and the Appalachian Mountains themselves, come startlingly alive for the reader in this fourth in Price's family saga. Get it whether you've read the others or not.