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A LITTLE BETTER THAN PLUMB: The Biography of A House by Henry & Janice Holt Giles

A LITTLE BETTER THAN PLUMB: The Biography of A House

By

Pub Date: March 14th, 1963
ISBN: 0813108330
Publisher: oughton Mifflin

The biography of a log house built by the Spout Springs Branch in Adair County, Kentucky, provides as well an autobiographical ramble for historical novelist Janice Holt Giles and her newspaperman husband. An earlier bout as ""unjolly farmers"" on a working farm did not discourage the Giles from wanting a country place of their own without the drudgery and with time to write. Along with the story of the house -- of finding the land and securing log sets, of putting on the roof or patting particularly beautiful ogs -- Mrs. Giles acclaims the Kentucky county chauvinism and air, chats about how she writes, deals with visiting members of her reading public, enjoys the exploits of her grandchildren. Mr. G. gets in his licks with a couple of chapters from his side of the kitchen table. The house which was ""conceived in nostalgia, born in hope, nurtured in determination, nourished in love, vexations, frustrations, joy, laughter and triumph"", was also ""matured in despair and doomed by progress"" -- for the Giles have had word that their property is required for a reservoir and that they are living on borrowed time in their log house, the house itself threatened with extinction. Mainly for Mrs. Giles' established audience -- for those who want to know her as a person.