Where the Lilies Bloom by Vera and Bill Cleaver ~ 1969. This edition: Scholastic, 1974. Paperback. 175 pages.
My rating: Oh, gosh. This is a hard one. The writing is unique and enjoyable to read; the heroine’s voice is individualistic and uniquely portrayed. But the plot is where I held my head in agony. I get that this is a book aimed at the children’s/teens’ market, and therefore perhaps to be expected to be slightly simplified, but the plot was so full of holes that I kept stopping and going “What…???!!!” But the poignant bits were genuinely heartbreaking, and the story as a whole just might have happened. Just maybe…
Okay, I need to commit myself to a rating. How about an 8/10, with reservations. If a bit better developed and with more attention to plausibility, this one could well have been worth a 9 or even a 10 from me.
This is basically one of those bleak Appalachian stories all about abject poverty and fiercely stubborn people living in various degrees of squalor among fabulous natural beauty. And, predictably, we are taken behind the superficial vision of “dirty hillbillies” to see into the glorious nobility of the characters’ souls.
I am sincere in putting forth a rather cynical generalization of this type of fiction, which was abundant in the 1960s and 1970s, at least in the juvenile novels I was finding in my school library. There seemed to be a certain trend to showing all of the dreary details in kid-lit, with an amazingly strong hero, or, more frequently, a heroine, overcoming all sorts of obstacles and ending the book staring off into the gleaming sunrise (metaphorically speaking) of a better future. Hyper-realism combined with a fairytale ending. (“Did we play upon your deepest emotions, young reader? Well, here’s a nice resolution to make it all better.”) However, as the next development in youth fiction of the 1970s, 1980s and beyond was of brutally unrelieved bleak endings, I guess the “happy” fabrications are a mite easier to handle.
So here we have a family of five people living in a tired shack on twenty acres of share-cropped land in North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains. Widowed Roy Luther, patriarch of the family, is seriously ailing. About to die, in fact. Before he does, in a heart-rending episode, he makes his four children promise that they will bury him in a hand-dug grave, not inform anyone of his demise, and take care of each other. They are not to accept charity from anyone, and the eldest daughter, eighteen-year-old Devola, described as “cloudy-headed” (quite obviously mentally handicapped to a certain degree), beautiful in appearance and childishly happy in nature, is not to marry the wicked landlord, one Kiser Pease, who is actively pursuing her.
Fourteen-year-old Mary Call Luther is our narrator, and the heroine of this dramatic novel of survival.
Roy Luther has made me promise him some things:
When the time comes, which he hopes will be in his sleep, I am to let him go on as quietly as he can, without any wailing or fussing. I am not to call any doctor or allow anyone else to call one. If it happens at night I am to wait until morning before I tell the others: I am not to send for the preacher or undertaker. The preacher has a mighty voice in these mountains but he expects to be paid for his wisdom. And the undertaker, for all his hushed, liquid speakings of how paltry his tariff will be, can be ill-humoured and short-tempered when the time comes to divvy up as we found out in the case of Cosby Luther, my maternal parent, who died of the fever four years ago.
So it is that Roy Luther has requisitioned me to give him a simple, homemade burial when the time comes. After I am sure his heart and breathing have stopped, I am to wrap him in an old, clean sheet and take him to his final resting place, which will be within a stand of black spruce up on Old Joshua. We have not talked about how I am to get him there. Were you to ask Roy Luther it would shame him to have to say aloud that it will have to be in Romey’s wagon and he’d have to say what for me to do with the feet which will surely drag because the vehicle is but a toy.
Quite a charge for a fourteen-year-old; as Devola is incapable of taking charge, and the other children are even younger than Mary Call. Brother Romey is only ten, and smallest sister Ima Dean six.
From the tragedy of a slowly dying father, the story turns to farce with the discovery of Kiser Pease in a state of sickness alone in his house; the siblings decide to try some home remedies out on him, immersing him in a bathtub full of stewed onions to break his fever. Holding Kiser hostage in his weakened state, Mary Call forces him to sign a paper giving the Luthers the title to their farm, which he does with surprising meekness.
Roy Luther lingers on, and the children turn to wildcrafting to make grocery money. Wildcrafting, for those unfamiliar with the concept, is the gathering of wild plants, generally for medicinal purposes. The Appalachians are a rich hunting ground for this purpose – ginseng, goldenseal, witch hazel and mayapple are just a few of the wild herbs fetching high prices at the drug store in the nearby settlement.
Roy dies and is buried by Mary and Romey in the most brutally poignant episode in this emotional little story; I swear a tear or two formed in my own eyes as I read this part. But the children soldier on, pretending to everyone that their father is still alive, and preparing as best they can for the fast-approaching cold time.
Disaster after disaster strikes the diminished family; winter is barely survived; but with spring a series of unlikely events brings a positive conclusion of sorts to this saga of endurance.
All in all, a decent enough fiction for the pre-teen to adult readership. Abandon your sense of disbelief at the first page, and just let yourself go; it’s the easiest way to get through this one, believe me.
If presenting this to your children as a novel study or social studies curriculum supplement, there are some truly interesting features in the story. The wildcrafting parts are based on fact, and would, to my mind, be the most valuable episodes to emphasize and research further. As for Appalachian life, I am of the opinion that this is a highly dramatized version. There is no real sense of a specific time period; one could assume the story is set in some time from the 1940s up until the 1950s or 60s. There is electricity, radios, freezers, cars, and tractors, but people are still farming with mules as well, and ignorance and superstition are rampant.
I have mixed feelings about this now-classic drama. Some parts are strong and beautifully written; other elements, such as the aforementioned shaky plotting, leave me at a complete loss.
I will be watching for other titles by this husband-and-wife team. I’ve recently read a later novel of theirs, Hazel Rye, and found it intriguing. Like Where the Lilies Bloom, a bit “light” despite the serious themes addressed, but with a certain charm and appeal, and containing passages that stay with one long after the book is reshelved.
Where the Lilies Bloom was also made into a movie in 1974, which I have not seen. The stills included in this copy of the novel show a rather inspired casting, going by appearances alone, though it appears that the movie plot differs somewhat from that of the book. The actress playing Mary Call Luther, Julie Gholson, looks perfect for her role, and the other children appear suitably cast as well. If you’ve seen this movie, or, better yet, read the story, I’d be interested in your own reactions.
Leaves & Pages 
OMG. I have not re-read this but just loved it as a kid and actually I read every single V&B Cleaver book. They were probably my favourite authors at one time. And you’ve just made me realize they probably made me a fan of this genre as I’m still reading books about abject poverty in the Ozarks and Appalachia. Just finishing up reading all of Daniel Woodrell’s books now.
I remember this book from my childhood. So bleak it probably traumatized me for life!
Hahaha, I remember this book so clearly from my childhood. Every year until sixth grade, the threat of having to read it loomed over me, and I KNEW it was going to be as bleak as you’ve just described, and I enormously did not want to read it. I escaped it though. They changed reading lists and I never got assigned it.
It’s horribly bleak, in parts. I mean, the whole episode with the father slowly dying (probably of some sort of cancer from the vague description given) and then having to drag his body up a mountainside in a toy wagon, and the digging of a grave by two children (think about that, and what sheer effort it would entail, not to mention having Daddy’s mortal remains lying there off to the side) and then the actual burial. And then going around all “La la la, everything’s just FINE, Mrs. Nosy Neighbour, Daddy’s just sleeping in the back room…” Ack!
Any kid with an iota of imagination would find this nightmare-making; you had a lucky escape, Jenny! 😉
But, on the other hand, some of the writing is gorgeous. The authors were nothing if not sincere. They just wobbled seriously on their plotting; “uneven” is a charitable description. But the scenarios of both “Lilies” and “Hazel Rye” are memorable. In a generally good way, I hasten to add.
I wouldn’t give this to anyone younger than their teens, I think. It would be all right if they discovered it for themselves, but as assigned reading for younger kids I think it is a bit brutal, plus it isn’t all that plausible a story and I wonder if that is addressed in the classroom. Despite the “real” setting and a few of the “teachable moment” elements like the wildcrafting, most of it is purely dramatic fiction.
And bleak. 😉
A couple of years late to the party, but found your review and wanted to clarify something — one of your criticisms of the book was the “highly dramatized” life in the Appalachian mountains. I do not know if you have ever lived in the Appalachian mountains, and if you have I apologize in advance. Actually, for the late 40s and 50s, which seem to be the time period for this story, the situation (squalor?) Mary Call and her family were living in may have been very similar to several families in this area. My mom (who would have been between the ages of Devola and Mary Call about the time the story takes place) lived very much like that — and they were some of the “better off” ones. Go back one generation, and it would have been even more common. As a child, I knew families that also lived in situation very similar (or worse). Fortunately, such “lifestyles” are very, very rare now, so that element of the story was actually very believable to me.
Better late than never! Thank you so much for the enlightening comments, this one and the following.
Time to dust off those old Foxfire books, perhaps, which would surely serve to give some more background to the ‘Where the Lilies Bloom’ story. Weren’t they complied in the 1970s? I’m not quite certain exactly where in the area they were based, but as a broad picture of the time, place and people I would think there would be some similarities which would be common throughout the region.
I think I must read the book once more; the details are now a bit blurry. But I do recollect that much of my annoyance was more at the over-simplification of certain plot elements than of the portrayal of the setting. The scenario was certainy dramatic; positively heart-rending in places (and beautifully written, as I mention in my review), but there were some plausibility gaps which had nothing to do with time period or setting – some difficult bits which were jumped over by the authors’ creative use of coincidence and vague detailing. To be expected in a children’s/young adult book, perhaps more so than in a novel aimed at an older audience. I see that I did rate the book very highly, so I obviously found much to admire.
Again, many thanks for the comments. I may well revisit the novel and the review.
And have you seen the movie? I haven’t, but the stills in my edition of the novel are most intriguing,
Oh – and no, I have never lived in the Appalachians, so my judgement is very long distance, as it were, with my slight knowledge of the region gained merely through other reading. (I live in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, in the Cariboo-Chilcotin region, home to its own brand of people living a lifestyle-that-time-forgot, and immersed in our own particular set of rural legends.) So your first-hand reflections are much appreciated.:-)
“There is electricity, radios, freezers, cars, and tractors, but people are still farming with mules as well, and ignorance and superstition are rampant.”
Actually, this was true, and common, in the Appalachians up into the 70s. Also, it was not uncommon to find “old-timers” in the most rural of communities still farming by mules in the 90s and early 2000s.
Honestly, the life portrayed by Mary Call and her sisters was true in parts of Western North Carolina — it was bleak, but it was the reality for a lot of people. My mom grew up in a situation very similar — and it was “normal” for many of those around her. Now, not so much so, but in the 50s-70s, yes, very much so.
(I tried to post earlier, so if they both post, I apologize.)