WHERE THE LILIES BLOOM

by Vera & Bill Cleaver ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 5, 1969

In her own words, Mary Call Luther has ""what it takes to get along in this world. Guts."" Her mother is dead and her father, expecting to die, has made her promise to bury him at home, keep the four children together without taking charity, and prevent sweet, ""cloudy-headed"" Devola from marrying Kiser Pease, who owns the farm they sharecrop. Providently, when Mary Call finds Kiser flattened out and feverish, she swathes him in fried onions (a mountain remedy), stands by until he comes to, and bribes/scares him into signing over the farm; then she conceives of wildcrafting -- gathering medicinal plants -- for extra income. So that when Roy Luther dies and has been laid in the grave he dug (by fourteen-Year-old Mary Call and her ten-year-old brother), the children will be secure if they can conceal the fact of his death. And if Mary Call, become ""mean and ugly,"" can keep the others to the flinty path she's laid out. Hardest to put off is Kiser, doggedly, bumblingly determined to marry the willing, now quite competent Devola. And finally, after the roof has fallen in (literally, and in consequence of Kiser's sister's intention to evict them from the land she, not he, owned), it is the mild couple who firmly and lovingly take over from Mary Call the burden of deciding what they and the children should do. Set solidly in the Great Smokies and told without a tremor -- a sad, tough, not unfunny story of individuals who continually grow, raw in spots, morally rigorous -- altogether a special presence, a special power.

Pub Date: Sept. 5, 1969

ISBN: 0064470059

Page Count: -

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1969

Categories: FICTION