Roanoke Rock Muddle

Rating:
Summary: Universal People in a Time and Place Particular
Review: There is an ethos about places, including their inhabitants, some more than others. Take a river, the great Roanoke, its swamps and forests and farmland, its towns like Williamston, and its families, some there for centuries, and you have an ethos worth exploring, enjoying, and learning from in never ending ways.

Lucia Peel Powe lived in Williamston for some three decades. In her novel, Roanoke Rock Muddle, she brings us life there in the 1920s and 1930s. She could see and hear that riverine world, her empathy embracing its nuances. Mrs. Powe drew her scenes sharply and colorfully, exhibiting their complexities.

This literature will live along with the Roanoke. The characters are believable and finely developed in both what we can know and what we and their fellow characters can only suppose - real life.

One character in particular, an African-American servant, could "only happen in the South" as we sometimes say. Some may think her an undue flight of literary imagination. Not so! She lived in another Southern state. The characters in the story reacted with surprise, but like many Southerners, continued as before in love and respect - adding her to their treasure of family lore.

There are surprises in Williamston. Often they appear in someone's individuality and in social relations. Events, too, overtake some of the inhabitants, perhaps avoidable but not necessarily fixable. The story ends - as it should - in a reminder of our universality as a blend of good and ill and a lot in between.

Lucia Powe has another compliment for the Roanoke. She dedicated part of the book's earnings to the preservation of its swamps and forests.

Cooks and diners can also savor some favorite recipes from Ben-Olive who pleasured many a Williamstonian and visitor.