ANGEL OF APPALACHIA: Martha Berry

by Elisabeth P. Myers ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 18, 1968

What began as the concern of a young girl for the poor ""mountain folk"" near her Georgia home developed from a Sunday ritual of apples, gingerbread and Bible stories into boarding school for boys from the hills of Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and the Carolinas. Sixty-six years later the complex includes a girls' school, a grammar school, a junior college, and a four-year, fully-accredited college. Martha Berry emphasized self-help, insisted that her students pitch in by growing and cooking food, constructing buildings, maintaining grounds and equipment. Surprising and significant for 1902--but frequent use of dialogue (one dialect for the Negro servants, another for the mountain folk, and literary English for the rest) detracts from the story, and the text is salted with Mammy's ""proverbs."" Martha is an ""angel"" from tire to denouement, an unnecessary (and inadequate) epithet in an already declamatory book.

Pub Date: March 18, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Messner

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1968

Categories: NONFICTION