Customer testimonials:
A Review of Turning Out
My name is Pansy Robinson. I run a restaurant in Byrdstown, Tennessee called Wolf River Grill. Rudy Thomas is a good customer who comes to our place on weekends. We got to know Rudy and he became our good friend. One night we were talking and he told me he was an author and had published several books. He asked me if I liked to read. I told him when I could find a free minute I like to read.
He gave me two of his books on Feb. 11th. Not long after that, a terrible storm hit Byrdstown. The town and community were without electricity. I could not open the restaurant so I went home and started reading Turning Out. It got dark so I lit some candles and kept reading. The book was so good I couldn't put it down. It reminded me of growing up on a farm and of times when neighbors helped each other. It was great. Within two hours I had finished it.
When I talked to Rudy the next weekend, I told him I loved his book, but if I didn't know how his life turned out, I would have wondered. I think he should write a Part Two of this book just to let people know where he is in his life. Stay tuned... It may happen. I love this book and wish everyone would read it.
Small Town Boy Walks Batter--Makes Good Anyway
A review by Bill Burcham (Portland, OR USA)
Set in a 100 square-mile plot of earth in South-Central Kentucky, Turning Out is a first-hand fictional account of growing up in a tiny Appalachian communtiy in the 1950's and 1960's.
The main character, known affectionately to his uncle as Roastnear, is feisty, even at five, helping bear the weight of his father's farm and dreams. We follow him through primary school and his coming of age.
There's no big story arc here. It's more like a real life than that. It's all about the texture. That being said, there is plenty of food for thought, both moral and philosophical.
We meet preachers, politicians and farmers; cousins and uncles and grandparents. We see first-hand how quid pro (and whiskey) make the world go 'round. Nor does Thomas skimp on those two staples of rural American literature: sacrifice and empathy.
Roastnear's father epitomizes the near impossibility of individual farming in the late 20th century. He works a day job as a "body man", repairing wrecked cars to subsidize his passion for independence, land and crop. It was refreshing to see this father, with the burden of all that risk and all that labor, treated not as some sort of dark Captain Ahab, but rather as a pretty happy guy. The best example of the latter is from the surprise dinner party scene (I won't spoil it for you!).
This is the first book I've read by Rudy Thomas. I look forward to reading more.
Journeys, An Essay by Samantha Burchett
Journeys, by Rudy Thomas, is a novel that tells the story of a young man called Martin “Cry” Kreider. In the book, Cry is on a journey from adolescence to manhood. The book contains many references to historical events and characters. In the book, Cry goes to a fancy gal sale and purchases a fancy gal in order to bargain for a horse his father sent him to buy. The fancy gal he bought gets traded to Nathan Bedford Forrest for the horse and a second young female slave Cry does not want to own.
The fancy gal slave trade that happened in this book actually occurred in the 17th century. The African slave trade became a way of life in the late 1500s and early 1600s; English would go to Africa, capture slaves and sell them for a large profit in the English colonies. After Oliver Cromwell seized power in England, the Irish and English fought wars and Cromwell had Irish men sent to Australia or New Zealand penal colonies, but children and women were shipped to the West Indies, Jamaica, Barbados, and other Caribbean islands. It was then that slave owners began breeding the attractive Irish women with African men and creating what historians now call “mulattos”. The slave owners quickly found that this was a profitable business because slave traders would pay big money to purchase the light-skinned, dark haired women they called “fancy maids.” The fancy maids or gals became perfect symbols of slavery’s unsavory history.
In Journeys, Cry is sent to Nashville from New York in order to purchase his father a stallion from Henry Clay’s “race winning line of thoroughbreds”. When Cry goes to the auction, he encounters a man named John Declaration Jones but nicknamed Deck. While he is waiting for the auction to start, he is chatting with Deck and he realizes that the auction was canceled because a slave trader and owner named Nathan Bedford Forrest purchased everything in the sale, including the Clay stallion. Deck then tells Cry that if he wants the horse to meet him the next morning and he hands Cry the book A Vindication of the Rights of Women and tells him if he wants the horse to “read, read, read.” When Cry reads the book, he finds a handbill that announces a fancy gal sale. When he goes to the new sale the next morning, Deck is there waiting for him, Deck tells him that he must buy the best fancy gal and that “Ya’ll know hur az soon az ya see hur.” (Journeys pg.19) Cry ends up buying a blue-eyed fancy gal, a fancy gal who also captured the fancy of another buyer.
When Cry gets to his relatives' home, he gets unexpected visitors. The visitors are the man who wants to be the fancy gal's owner, Mr. Porter, and Nathan Bedford Forrest. They come to bargain with Cry for his fancy gal because he had purchased the one that Mr. Forrest had promised the man he would buy. The bargain that ensued ended up being for the blue-eyed fancy gal in exchange for the Clay stallion and a slave gal. The slave gal Cry acquired that night changed his outlook on life forever.
When it comes time for Cry to make his way back to New York, he takes the stallion and the slave on a steamboat that going up the Cumberland River. The new slave woman’s name is Alyx Day, she tells Cru that her grandfather always joked that they would never be in the dark and then she says, “He was so wrong. Ise ban n darknuss sence Ise ban solt.” (Journeys pg.39) Cry tells her that he is going to free her when they get to Kentucky and she tells him she wants to go to Berea, Kentucky where blacks and whites can go to school together. Cry then tells Alyx, “Tell me a story. Tell me your story.” (Journeys pg.41)
Alyx begins to tell Cry how her family from five, six, or seven generations back had lived on farmland that was not supposed to be lived on after Oliver Cromwell invaded Ireland. Women who were living on the wrong side of the river, including a member of her family got sent to Jamaica and then got sold to the states. She tells him how her mother told her the night before she got sold that she was a slave and how she never knew her own mother was a slave until her father died. She talked of how her grandmother had taught her and her siblings to read and write and about how she loved Science. She told him how she had wanted to travel to England one day like her grandmother did, and about how her father had died when she was fourteen. Cry gets amazed by Alyx’s story and how hard her life has been. As he began to spend more time with her, Cry would have fantasies about Alyx and think about her beauty, grace, and intelligence. Cry would always tell Alyx to tell him her story, and Alyx would tell him of times that she had been beaten, raped, and spat on. These stories only made Cry want to help her more. Alyx’s story in Journeys personifies the life of being a slave and having the burden of having your life belong to another.
All people have a common uniqueness about them. Every person has a story to tell, that’s what makes a person and defines the journey that the person makes through life. Alyx’s life as a slave forever defined her life’s journey. Through falling in love with Alyx, Cry came from the confusion and bouts of adolescence into the journeys of manhood. In a sense, falling in love with Alyx impacted Cry’s life in such a way that he always thought out things with his mind and he always kept searching for more along his journey hoping that in searching for more, he would find her, for she and the stallion are both stolen.
In the book Journeys, I found that I learned a great deal about how one person’s journey can impact another’s in significant ways. Alyx’s journey was personified through being a slave after having been a child who had no knowledge of her ancestry. I will not reveal more of this compelling story.
Works Cited
“In Memory of the Irish Victims of Slavery”
<http://www.giftofireland.com/IrishSlaves.htm>
Thomas, Rudy, Journeys, Old Seventy Creek Press, 2007. pgs. 19, 39,
41.
“Cuffy," "Fancy Maids," and "One-Eyed Men": Rape, Commoditization, and the Domestic Slave Trade in the United States”. Edward E. Baptist. 2001. American Historical Association.
<http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.5/ah0501001619.html>
Back To E by Brittany Pike
I have recently ready Rudy Thomas' novel, Back To E, and I have to say it is one of the best books I have read. The novel is full of mystery and hidden meanings which are tied to the life of the writer, Ernest Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway has almost been forgotten, but Back To E sheds new light on the once adored writer and his complex character.
Hemingway appears in the novel, after his suicide, as a ghost. He is reacquainted with David, the main character from his book, The Garden of Eden. Hemingway is not aware of the fact that the book was published after his death until he reads it early in the novel. David is a ghost as well; both of the ghosts live in a house owned by a man named Tomas. Tomas, who is working on writing a book, has some interesting encounters with them. Throughout the novel, Hemingway and David learn much about each other, just as any reader will learn much about Hemingway, even if the information is not written in bold type... I recommend Back To E to anyone who loves a good read. It is an excellent book to read for a college book report or research paper, or for anyone who is interested in Ernest Hemingway's life and writing style.