The Land Breakers
John Ehle
Language: English
Pages: 368
ISBN: 1590177630
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Set deep in the Appalachian wilderness between the years of 1779 and 1784, The Land Breakers is a saga like the Norse sagas or the book of Genesis, a story of first and last things, of the violence of birth and death, of inescapable sacrifice and the faltering emergence of community.
Mooney and Imy Wright, twenty-one, former indentured servants, long habituated to backbreaking work but not long married, are traveling west. They arrive in a no-account settlement in North Carolina and, on impulse, part with all their savings to acquire a patch of land high in the mountains. With a little livestock and a handful of crude tools, they enter the mountain world—one of transcendent beauty and cruel necessity—and begin to make a world of their own.
Mooney and Imy are the first to confront an unsettled country that is sometimes paradise and sometimes hell. They will soon be followed by others.
John Ehle is a master of the American language. He has an ear for dialogue and an eye for nature and a grasp of character that have established The Land Breakers as one of the great fictional reckonings with the making of America.
and stumbled away, seeking the bench, and found it before he was fully aware that he was there. He stopped at the edge of it, wondering how he was to cross a bridge so narrow. He moved onto it, driven by his fears of the place he was leaving, fleeing the ghost of the dead man who he knew was not dead, hurrying, until suddenly he stopped, sank down on the shaky bridge to save himself from tumbling headlong into the river, his confidence in both bench and reasoning leaving him at the same time. He
corner of the cart and stepped into the shadows; they heard the horse move as she unstrapped the bacon. Lorry straightened. “I’d best join him,” she said. He watched her walk to the fire, saw her stop near her father. “Where you been?” the old man said to her. He stepped around the wagon and went on down to the branch, where he washed out the bowl. He was resting there, waiting for the night to get still and his mind to settle down. After a while he felt he was being watched. He turned and saw
dashing down the trail as if the world wouldn’t wait until he got to wherever it was he was going. He didn’t get back until late and he was singing out at the top of his voice a song Mildred had never in all her life heard him sing: Oh, for a glance of heavenly day To take this stubborn stone away, And thaw with beams of love divine This heart, this frozen heart of mine. He dismounted and swung around by the fire and didn’t seem to pay any attention to Amos, who was waking up unhappily. He
who spoke. “You’ve got her sister over to your house now. I think you’ve made her your wife. Well, you’ll not get another’n. I’d rather have her sleeping with the stock.” “You are a common sort of animal,” Harrison said sternly. “Common is as common thinks he is.” “Well, what do you think you are?” “I think my own thoughts, never fear,” he said. “I want you to remember I have done more for you than any man alive.” “And look how we’ve prospered. You’ve helped me to stay and suffer.” He moved
kissing the back of her neck and shoulders, and when she squirmed, he made her slide down farther into the water, so she couldn’t even squirm, and then he was holding her close to him and rubbing her shoulder with his chin and was talking gently to her and rocking her slightly, as if she were a baby, and once she whispered to him in spite of the way she disliked him. They slid even farther into the water. “Law, I’m getting my tail wet,” she said. He kissed her neck, and when she turned her