Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith (1989, Paperback, Reprint)

Fair and Tender Ladies is the kind of novel that moves into your heart and stays forever. Once you have met Ivy Rowe and been with her in the good double cabin with a breezeway in Sugarloaf, Virginia you will always want to go back.

Ivy tells her turn of the century family saga through a series of letters that begin with her as an eight year old child writing by candle light from a cabin deep in the hills of Appalachia to a potential pen-pal in Holland. Ivy tells all in this first letter and the contrast between how she imagines the little dutch girl must live and the reality of her own backwoods existence is powerful.

She writes to the little dutch girl of her family; the mother who left a wealthy family of a higher class to live in the ruggedly beautiful back woods of Virginia with the mountain man she loved, of that mountain man now lying on a pallet in front of the fire waiting for death to rob his family of everything they have, of the beautiful white sister Sylvanie who is touched and goes walking in the woods at night and her dark twin brother who seems to carry both of their shadows. She tells of the wild beauty and hard life in of the Appalachian hills. She tells so much that her teacher decides the letter is inappropriate and won't send it, but Ivy keeps on writing and never stops.

The family must leave the hills and come to Geneva's boarding house in town when the father dies and from there Ivy's path leads seemingly further away from Sugarloaf. Her intelligence and talent attract teachers of all intentions, such as Miss Torrington, who offers Ivy her chance to escape the backwoods and become her educated and cultivated student. Ivy packs her bags and then unpacks them after Miss Torrington shows her true affections with a kiss. Miss Torrington leaves the boarding house in shame and teenage Ivy gives in to the boy who has been chasing her and must soon leave the boarding house too.

Ivy begins her wanderings which take her to the Kentucky coal fields during the early union battles and through her letters from the coal camp we learn of the injustice done to the working people of Appalachia by the big coal bosses and unions, a tragedy most Americans don't even know about. While she is there she is wooed by the rich coal baron's son and must choose between him and a man who labors in those same mines, a country man like herself who offers her rock steady love.

The theme of Ivy confronted with a choice between who she is and what she could become is central to the book. Ivy always wants to learn, to have an education so she can be a writer. She wants to know what is beyond the line of hills that protect and isolate her, but an inborn wisdom of spirit keeps her from giving too much in exchange, and she sets her feet back on the road toward Sugarloaf with unerring integrity. Ivy writes letters that mature as she does and they show that she gets her education after all.

Ivy's passions and shames as a mature woman are written to Sylvanie, already dead. Only to her dead sister can she confess her sins with Honey Breeding and what happened after that. These letters are the crown jewels of the book.

You will adore the wise old woman Ivy becomes and miss her for days after you finish the book.

This is Lee Smith's masterpiece. Enjoy.