Mimi Herman's Blog - Posts Tagged "hemlock-hollow"

Hemlock Hollow by Culley Holderfield

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


When it comes to this astonishing book by Culley Holderfield, I got lucky. A good six and a half years before the rest of the world was invited into Hemlock Hollow, Culley Holderfield invited me to edit an early draft. As with all great writers who know the power of revision, Culley has transformed this book from the promising draft I saw into the rich mixture of past and present, love and grief, history and psychology, that you now have the opportunity to read.

Told firsthand by Caroline McAllister in the present day, and Carson Quinn in the late 1800s, Hemlock Hollow is both a murder mystery and a love letter to a secluded Appalachian hollow in North Carolina. An old rusted box and a boy’s journal give us insight into the small community where Caroline finds herself years after Carson’s death. Caroline, who cannot believe that someone who could love this hollow as she does could be a murderer, uses her investigative skills to widen the search for the truth buried in history. At the same time that she is working to resurrect Carson’s reputation, she is trying to resurrect her family cabin in Hemlock Hollow, discovering in the process that she may be able to resurrect herself as well, by letting go of a brittle sense of isolation and letting in the people who care about her.

With generosity to his characters and unflinching fidelity to the complexities of southern life, Culley Holderfield has created a book that weaves together natural and human history to arrive at a truer sense of the south than any we read in newspapers or history books.



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