Bloodroot

I fell in love with this book. I found the characters and the storyline very interesting. As an Appalachian woman I can relate to many aspects of this beautiful story.

BLOODROOT This book was popping up all over the place -- magazines, the VINE program where I was smart enough and lucky enough to be able to obtain a copy, advertisements, word of mouth -- I was eager to get my copy and dive right in. What a first novel! Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new voice in literature. We are taken up to Bloodroot Mountain, located in Tennessee. It's a magically quiet place, an area where time seems to stand still, a location the world doesn't seem to know even exists. Living in the beautiful terrain are mountain folk who, for generations, have lived, loved, dealt with many heartaches and hardships. Yet, through love, hard work, and perseverance, they carry on. The story is told my very favorite way, in the voices of several different characters. We meet Byrdie Lamb, living on the mountain forever and a day, who has a way with herbs, roots, and some say is quite magical. She is known as a 'granny woman' and people rely on her heavily for her special ways and gifts. Byrdie births and raises many children, but it's her grand-daughter, Myra Lamb, who is her heart child. Myra is special too and has what many call 'haint blue eyes'. Myra loves her Granny and her life on the mountain. She runs wild and free, has her family and friends, and most of the boys that know her come to fall in love with her. We meet many characters, each adding their own story into the stories of the other characters whose lives are all entwined together -- some in good ways, others in horrible ways -- through each other. There's the Cotter men, handsome John Odom, his brother, Hollis, the twins, Johnny and Laura. We meet Carolina, Ford, Clint, Sunny, Zelda; all the characters have their own and distinct personality and add so much to the story. The names are wonderful and fit in perfectly with the mountain genre. This book catches the reader from page one and quickly turns into one of those books that you just can't put down. When not reading, I was thinking about the book and what was going to happen next. The author spins the tales of all the very well fleshed out characters so perfectly that you just cannot stop thinking about this book. These characters will stay with me for a long, long time. Honestly, I neglected EVERYTHING just so I could read, along with staying up until the wee hours of the night reading, turning pages way too fast, not wanting this book to ever end. But end it does, and we can only hope that Amy Greene's first novel will not be her last. She has a bright and promising future for herself. This book is highly recommended. Thank you! Pam

I have always held the opinion that anyone can author a book, but not everyone can be a writer. An author writes words on paper and if they're lucky, they will someday have pages that will be binded into a book. You may like it, you may love it, you may hate it but in the end, it's only words. But a writer, a writer weaves a story. In and out with the start of one word and when they finish, they have an incredible tapestry of words that tell a story. You see the story, in all its brillant colors. A picture painted with words. Bloodroot is one of those tapestries, a picture that you read. Told in different voices, it follows a family in the hills of Tennessee. Byrdie, the grandmother, who raised Myra after her parents were killed in a car meets train accident. Myra, the central character in the story and how she didn't so much as fall off the mountain as jump, and then spent most of her time trying to figure out a way to get back on the mountain. Then Johnny and Laura, Myra's twin children and how the choices we make in life effect not just us, but all those we love. You don't have to love the South to love this story, the Appalachia folklore that some may question but others believe. Amy Greene painted a very vivid picture of life on Bloodroot Mountain. So vivid that you can taste the clear springs water, feel the dew on your feet, hear the crunching of the leaves, feel the wind blowing around you as you stand on that ledge where an ancester jumped, where Johnny was biten. You can see all of the mountain standing on that ledge and you breathe it in and you want to go there. You want to travel to that mountain where doors were always open, neighbors gave when others needed, helped when help was needed. A brillant debut from an author that I very much look forward to reading more from.

On Bloodroot Mountain in Eastern Tennessee, Byrdie Lamb raises her grandchild Myra, whose mother and father died when a train hit their vehicle while they were carousing. Byrdie loves Myra who is more a daughter to her than her daughter Myra's mom Clio ever was. She also knows Myra has the "touch" skill that runs in the family though Byrdie never displayed this ESP talent. In fact, Myra's boyfriend Doug not only realizes it, he knows he will never win her love because of it. He is proven right when she meets John Odom, son of the hardware store owner. He is also "touched" and they passionately fall in love. However his violence pushes her from his valley home back up the mountain where she raises their twins Laura and Johnny. The siblings have issues as their mom is placed in an asylum. Laura marries and has a child, but when her spouse dies his family takes away her kid. Johnny burns down his paternal side's store. The next generation seems destined to repeat the same mistakes as the previous generations on Bloodroot Mountain. This is an engaging Appalachia family drama that looks deep inside the souls of the cast with Myra being the link between five generations of mountain people. Although the subplots are straighter than the Bonneville Salt Flats and some key characters just vanish, readers will appreciate the depth of life on Bloodroot Mountain as even a finger with a ring on it becomes symbolic of dreams broken and breathing in Amy Greene's profound harsh slice of Appalachia. Harriet Klausner

One of the most enjoyable things about Amy Green's Bloodroot is that is it that rare novel that gets better as it goes along. While I admit that the first section of the novel is a bit slow at times and some of it seems extraneous, Greene pulls the disparate parts of the novel together at the end, but never too neatly, into a satisfying conclusion. The novel revolves around Myra, an Appalachian woman born into a slightly troubled, slightly magical, perhaps, family. The opening section of the novel is narrated by two people who love her, whom she has left--her grandmother and a neighbor, Doug, who has loved her as they have grown from childhood to young adulthood. Myra has left them both to marry a man who appears to be trouble. While the opening is a bit slow, the narrative slowly builds and draws the reader in, raising questions, some of them never truly answered about Myra and those in her life. This novel is quite an enjoyable read, ultimately compelling and a bit surprising. The characters are never of a type and develop in believably unpredicatble ways. I think Bloodroot would make an excellent choice for a book club. There is much to discuss--while the major questions are resolved for the reader, there is enough left for the readers imagination that I think would lead to a lively discussion. Enjoy!

The danger of Appalachian fiction is that the stories will become quaint, set as they are in a mountain world that exists like a magical and lost kingdom; isolated, unbelievably beautiful, dangerous and somehow enchanted. Bloodroot takes place partly in the mountains and partly in the world of foster homes, pool halls, cities and reform schools. That sense of Appalachia's isolation and enchantment runs like lifeblood or creekwater through this multi-generational tale of women who cannot be tamed. The first section of the story is the most confusing, alternating between two narrators whose thankless job it is to set the stage for the mysterious story that will follow. By the time Byrdie Lamb and Douglas Cotter finish telling their stories, I was completely bewitched by the characters and the plot, but the second section, narrated by twins Johnny and Laura, is that much more powerful. The twins' story follows the dark currents of genetic inheritance, the curse of blood, how nature emerges despite any counteracting nurture. The writing in this novel is stunning. I could smell, see, touch and taste the world of the characters, whether it was the green cool of the mountain or the dirt and rocks of a gravel yard. I could hear the scream of a baby rabbit or the scrabbling wings of a trapped bird. To have such a dark story told so beautifully makes for a wrenchingly painful tour-de-force that thankfully leaves the reader with the true possibility of redemption and hope. Very highly recommended.