Terry Roberts, Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival

                                     

Turner Publishing Company

I have discovered that I love reading historical fiction about my new home in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Well, I should be honest here, so far I have only read two since moving here BUT, both were so outstandingly good that I'm starting to think that all books about 

this magical part of the world must be just as wonderful. 

My first introduction to this genre was Over the Plain Houses by Julia Franks. My God, what a fine book.

Now the great Terry Roberts, author of That Bright Land,

winner of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award as well as the James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South and A Short Time to Stay Here, winner of the 

Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction,  has written another incredible novel that takes place about the same time period, the early 1900's: The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival. 

Terry Roberts by J.L. Roberts

It's one of those exceptional novels that everyone loves, the kind that sits on your night stand and whispers to you over and over "Come back, you know you need to find out what happens to Jedidiah." I was an easy mark for that particular siren call. The story grabs you right from the start and won't let you go and you don't want it to.

Paul Mastin of the blog Reading Glutton, wrote this review that I love:

"Terry Roberts grew up in North Carolina.  Reading his books, you'd think he grew up in North Carolina in the 1920s or earlier.  He knows the land, knows the people, and knows the stories.  In The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival, he affectionately takes us back to the 1920s, during a time when prohibition and speakeasies barely tolerated one another, and when tent revivals were a great form of entertainment and cultural life.  

Jedidiah Robbins travels through the South by train with his merry band of an evangelistic team.  With a circus tent, and the circus roustabouts that came with it, they roll into town bringing a taste of old-fashioned revival fire.  

On the sly, they bring a fire of another kind.  In the same train car where they carry their Bibles, they have cases of moonshine, which they surreptitiously supply to speakeasies, blind pigs, and juke joints in the less reputable parts of town.  They want to be certain that some of the town folk will have plenty to repent of! 

Along the way, Jedidiah and his crew attracts crowds, but also attracts the wrong kinds of attention.  (Or, in a way, the right kind.)  When he preaches in Asheville, the crowd isn't the usual working class of farmers and coal miners that usually fill his benches, but the white collar, high dollar crowd.  

Asheville, 1920's

So of course he preaches about the dangers of wealth and camels in the eye of a needle, offending most of the congregation.  When the leader of a fraternal organization fond of wearing white hoods and burning crosses asks for Robbins' support in their work, Robbins turns him away scornfully.  Unfortunately, his team pays the price for getting on the wrong side of the Klan. 

Terry's portrayal won't please many from a theological perspective.  Jedidiah is more about putting on a show and collecting the cash; the Bible is merely the means by which he has chosen to do so.  He eventually comes around to faith of a kind; his getting there is the journey of The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival.  The story takes the reader to another time, and could almost have been written in another time, like it dropped through a time machine from a publisher half a century in the past."  

Here's my interview with Terry and his answer to the time travel question:

Tell me about where you live and why you love it so much.

My fiancé, Lynn Keith, and I just bought a house on the north side of Baird Mountain, north of Asheville. From our deck, you can see Madison County, NC (the setting of so much of my fiction) and beyond to the mountains of Tennessee. 

Mountains of Western North Carolina

In a larger sense, however, I live the Southern Appalachian Mountains, not terribly far from the highest peaks east of the Mississippi River. It’s a gorgeous place to live but a hard place to make a living, and my father’s family has been here since before 1800, existing primarily as subsistence farmers. So our extended family life goes back well beyond the Civil War into the earliest times of European settlement. 

Terry's great-great grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Freeman, who fought in the Civil War, and the girl standing beside him is Terry's grandmother, Belva Anderson (later Roberts)

I love it here both because of the deep, natural beauty of this world, and because my own family history is so deeply embedded here.

Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories?

When I was 7 years old, I lived with my parents and sister in an old, quarry-stone farmhouse at Sander’s Court on the Weaverville Highway. 

My father’s mother, my Grandma Roberts, lived in a small house about fifty feet from our own home, and I spent many, many hours with her as a boy, all around the farm and in the woods beyond. 

From her and my dad, I heard countless stories of the old times in Madison County and soaked it all up. My memories of that time and place are more than fond; it was a kind of heaven on earth for a little boy.

Did you have a favorite teacher and are you still in touch with him or her?

One of my favorite teachers was an English teacher at North Buncombe High School named Dwight Childers,      who was also from the mountains of Western North Carolina and who had been away to school. He was a reader and thinker who, by example, made it much more permissible for a high school boy in WNC to also become a reader and thinker. And eventually … a writer.

Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?

There is a myriad of books that had a huge impact on me, but I have to say that the mountain 
novels of John Ehle    are, collectively, the books that taught me so much about how the mountain world and mountain people that I knew could be translated into truly gorgeous literature.

Do you have a favorite children’s book?

I want to nominate a children’s book that I love from having read it with my children rather than one I remember from my own childhood. To this day, I love 
The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night, a picture book by Peter Spier. 

Both the story and the illustrations capture the natural world at night with a haunting beauty.

What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?

My sister, who is older than I, remembers me as a bookworm when I was a boy. I loved to be outside and I loved to read. That is not so funny, but it is embarrassing when in truth, I was the class bookworm, who had to be reminded to take my nose out of a book long enough to look at the world around me.

Is there any message you want to give to or anything you want to say to your great-great-great grandchildren when they read this?

I would love to tell my great-great-great grandchildren that they come from a long line of mountain people who are master story tellers. And that their love of nature and of a good story—including a good joke—comes down to them from their ancestors.

How did you meet your Lynn? How did your first date go?

My fiancée—soon to be my wife—and I met when we were older and had been married before. For a number of reasons, I think we met at a time in our lives when we could most appreciate each other and enjoy our life together. 

Sometimes, timing is everything.

How would you say you are different now than you were in your 20’s.

I am both happier and more patient than I was when I was in my 20’s. I think longer and more slowly now about deep questions and hard problems than I did then.  

I like to let my mind and heart navigate a challenging question over several seasons rather than rushing to judgement. That habit of mind may be why I’m a novelist rather than a short story writer. For me, writing a novel is a slow but very enjoyable process.

What do you admire the most about Jedidiah Robbins and his daughter Bridgett from your book?

What a great question! What I enjoy most about them is that together they form a durable but also very flexible family unit. When it’s just the two of them adventuring through the world, they are loyal to each other but at the same time, they fuss and cuss and discuss their way through. They don’t always agree—and in fact, often don’t—but they are gentle with and deeply respectful of each other. And when the time comes to welcome others into their small, tightly knit family, they help each other do so. They help each other find love in others rather than just demanding all of each other’s attention. I have great admiration for the way they move through the world together. 

And in a short essay…………………………

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME

to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,

be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,

actually experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,

meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.

When would you go?

Where would you go?

Who would you want to meet?

And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?

I would travel back in time to about 1915, when the Mountain Park Hotel still existed in Hot Springs, North Carolina, and I would spend the summer at the hotel as a guest. 

Mountain Park Hotel, 1917

I would travel there by train as it was all but impossible to get to Hot Springs from the outside world by any other mode of transportation (other than horseback). 

Tracks along the French Broad River between Hot Springs and Asheville, NC, 1920

While there, I would enjoy my stay at the Mountain Park by enjoying an occasional soak in the medicinal hot springs for which the town is named. But I would also take my glorious time and explore the surrounding countryside. In particular, I would travel back to the very isolated Anderson Cove, deep in the bowels of the surrounding mountains, where I would visit with my father’s family. In 1915, he was himself an infant, and his parents (my grandparents, Julius Caesar and Belva Anderson Roberts) would be a young, married couple struggling to establish their own farm on land originally owned by her parents.

Julius and Belva Roberts family in Anderson Cove from the 1930s

While I have traveled back to this territory any number of times in my imagination, I would give a small fortune to be able to visit there in the flesh and experience the mountains before they were carved up by interstates and invaded by automobiles, to see and taste and feel the deep coves and valleys before electricity and indoor plumbing. What was that life like and how did it shape both my grandmother and my father—who in turn played such a large role in shaping me.

For in addition to discovering my ancestors then and there, I would also discover my own inner landscape.

Thank you Terry for your deep and insightful thoughts about your heritage and writing such a wonderful book! Congratulations.

If you would like to see and hear Terry talk about his book, click here.

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