CALE

by Sylvia Wilkinson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 1970

Again Miss Wilkinson sets her story of the withering of generations and the erosion of family in rural North Carolina where self-determination is unwittingly nurtured but never tolerated. Cale Jenkins--its his story from birth to the high school years--is the son of Jerome, a bitter land-bound farmer, and Falissa, whose soul was bent to fear and inviolate limits. For a time, Grandpa Lonza, a gentle man loving flowers and birds, offers the child Cale companionship but his influence dies with his death. Through soliloquies, a slow spread through the lives of the family, a few neighbors and black tenant farmers, Cale's inevitable departure is indicated. The parents' own reach had been blunted--Jerome's expectations in property and Falissa's dreams (""I'm not even going to see what the ocean looks like""). And Uncle Roe, hard-drinking, whoring, a counterpressure to rigidity, is killed like a dog on the road. Also on the farm are the feared, despised, yet somehow unseen Negro tenants--and black Floyd, Cale's contemporary, the ""smart"" one, is thinking hard behind his unsettling mask. Scenting freedom in a different way, Cale at last decides to leave, to go anywhere--away from those to whom he could ""talk all day explaining things and. . . can't make it different."" A scrupulously prefigured pattern of drifting lives, and although sluggish at times because of that too-incessant care, Miss Wilkinson's tale bears weight and portent.

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970

Categories: FICTION