Addie: A Memoir - Hardcover

As I read and watched, I felt I'd fallen into Settle's world, a time-traveller, broadened and provoked and saddened by people and a landscape I never knew. Only a masterpiece can generate such illusions and, in my opinion, Mary Lee Settle has written one."--Marianne Gingher, Brightleaf

An autobiography that begins with one's birth begins too late, in the middle of the story, sometimes at the end. So begins Mary Lee Settle's memoir. Her story carries within it inherited choices, old habits, old quarrels, old disguises, and the river that formed the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia and the mores of her childhood. She traces effects on her family and herself as ancient as earthquakes, mountain formations, and the crushing of swamp into coal deposits. In doing so, Settle records the expectations, talents, and tragedies of a people and a place that would serve as her deep and abiding subject in The Beulah Quintet.