Harriette Simpson Arnow

Harriette Arnow’s roots ran deep into the Cumberland River country of Kentucky and Tennessee, and out of her closeness to that land and its people comes this remarkable history. The first of two companion volumes, Seedtime on the Cumberland captures the triumphs and tragedies of everyday life on the frontier, a place where the land both promised and demanded much. In the years between 1780 and 1803, this part of the country presented tremendous opportunity to those who endeavored to make a new life there. Drawing on an extensive body of primary sources—including family journals, court records, and personal inventories—Arnow paints a stirring portrait of these intrepid people. Like the midden at some ancient archaeological site, these accumulated items become a treasure awaiting the insight and organization of an interpreter. Arnow also draws on a medium she believed in unerringly—oral history, the rich tradition that shaped so much of her own family and regional experience. A classic study of the Old Southwest, Seedtime on the Cumberland documents with stirring perceptiveness the opening of the Appalachian frontier, the intersection of settlers and Native Americans, and the harsh conditions of life in the borderlands.

Harriette Arnow’s search for truth as early American settlers knew it began as a child—the old songs, handed-down stories, and proverbs that colored her world compelled her on a journey that informs her depiction of the Cumberland River Valley in Kentucky and Tennessee. Arnow drew from court records, wills, inventories, early newspapers, and unpublished manuscripts to write Seedtime on the Cumberland, which chronicles the movement of settlers away from the coast, as well as their continual refinement of the “art of pioneering.” A companion piece, this evocative history covers the same era, 1780–1803, from the first settlement in what was known as “Middle Tennessee” to the Louisiana Purchase. When Middle Tennessee was the American frontier, the men and women who settled there struggled for survival, land, and human dignity. The society they built in their new home reflected these accomplishments, vulnerabilities, and ambitions, at a time when America was experiencing great political, industrial, and social upheaval.

As compelling as it is turbulent, "The Weedkiller's Daughter "captures a family at the center of the rapidly changing society of midcentury Detroit. Fifteen-year-old Susie greets this new era with a sense of curiosity, while her father rages against it, approaching anything and everything foreign, unconventional, or unfortunate as he does the weeds he perpetually removes from his garden. As Susie seeks escape from her parents' increasingly restrictive world of order and monotony, she ventures deeper and deeper into a dangerously new territory. "The Weedkiller's Daughter" is a gripping psychological exploration of a generation on the brink of indelible--and irreversible--transformation.

Masterfully wrought and keenly observed, "Mountain Path "draws on Harriette Simpson Arnow's experiences as a schoolteacher in downtrodden Pulaski County, Kentucky, deep in the heart of Appalachia, prior to WWII. Far from a quaint portrait of rural life, Arnow's novel documents hardships, poverty, illiteracy, and struggles. She also recognizes a fragile cultural richness, one characterized by "those who like open fires, hounds, children, human talk and song instead of TV and radio, the wisdom of the old who had seen all of life from birth to death," and which has since been eroded by the advent of highways and industry. In "Mountain Path," Arnow exquisitely captures the voices, faces, and ways of a people she cared for deeply, and who evoked in her a deep respect and admiration.

In the early years of this century, Burnside, Kentucky, was a bustling community perched on and above the floodplain formed by the Cumberland River and the South Fork. It was a center for shipping by rail and steamboat packet, and its lumber mills sent their products all over the world. The lower part of the town -- once the heart of its economic being -- now lies beneath the waters of Lake Cumberland, and the remaining streets above no longer resound with the clatter and roar of older and busier times. Harriet Simpson Arnow moved to Burnside with her parents and sisters in 1913, a few months before her fifth birthday. She recreates for us the sights and sounds of the town as she sets her childhood memories against the history of the region from the days of early settlers until Wolfe Creek Dam was built, creating the hundred-mile-long Lake Cumberland. Arnow charms the reader with her account of what it was like to be child in such a place and time, describing the fascination of the general stores of the town, the grand sight of the Seven Gables Hotel, the excitement of school, and the ever-interesting river and railroad traffic, all of which lent diversion to a life that sometimes seemed overburdened with household chores and errand running. Though much of old Burnside has disappeared, the way of life Arnow describes is an important part of the fabric of the history of Kentucky and the nation. Evoking vivid scenes of river and railroad, lumber mill and country store, Arnow recreates for us with great artistry a long-vanished place and time.