FROM SCONES TO CORN PONES

Keith combines research, history, and travelogue in this nonfiction debut.

“Even before I could read,” the author, a retired educator, writes in the opening of the narrative, “I would climb up to my mother’s desk and fetch the little book of colorful tartans.” The descendants of early Scots-Irish settlers in the colonial American South, Keith’s family has long taken pride in their ancestry, which includes the prominent Randolph family of Virginia and two of the most mythologized men in Scottish history, Robert the Bruce and King James I. This book—which blends scholarly genealogical research conducted at archival repositories with oral histories of family stories passed down for generations—takes readers through a chronological journey of the author’s family history. The book begins with her family’s origins in Scotland through their participation in the United States Revolution and Civil War. Subsequent chapters follow various branches of the family tree from the Reconstruction era through World War II. The book’s second half centers on a 2018 trip to Scotland spearheaded by Keith, which included multiple members from her extended family, ages 3 to 71. Written as a travelogue, this section blends highlights of the trip (including Balmoral Castle and King’s College, Aberdeen) with historical commentary on how people and events in Scottish lore intersect with the author’s family history. Replete with full-color family snapshots, historical memorabilia, and maps, the book boasts an engaging writing style that makes for an accessible read. Admirably, though the book maintains a generally celebratory tone, the author does not shy away from the fact that many of her ancestors were enslavers, and she includes the family histories of enslaved men and women who adopted the Carson last name after the Civil War. Even when discussing how her family was not as “cold-blooded” as others, the author cautions that stories of benevolent enslavers have “been written or passed down from the white owners.”

A thoughtful family genealogy that doesn’t shy away from the problematic complexities of history.