Customer Reviews

The scarlet thread

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Betts, a fine author from North Carolina, is well-known for her novels Souls Raised From the Dead, Heading West, and The Sharp Teeth of Love, as well as her early short stories, including "The Ugliest Pilgrim." I picked up The Scarlet Thread, Betts' second novel (published when she was 32) at a library sale. I was unfamiliar with it, but quickly found myself bowled over by the power of her characters, the clarity of her scene setting, and her adept handling of tragedy, profound while avoiding melodrama. She tells the story of a small town NC family in the late-19th and early-20th centuries and how their lives and community are thrown into upheaval by the arrival of a cotton mill. Betts weaves together the stories of a culture upended by industrialization, and the members of a family whose differing approaches to life are thrown into high relief by their reactions to the mill. This is an unjustly forgotten novel that should be on the shelf of anyone even remotely interested in Southern literature.