Clay's Quilt, Silas House's First Novel

If you've ever lived in a sprawling metropolis, and then move to a backwoods rural area, you are familiar with the contrast between the civilized world and the untouched hand of nature.

Not only is there a large degree of difference in the physical landscape, there are also different types of people who inhabit those areas. For me, the rolling hills of Kentucky are a place like no other, because this little slice of the world seems to be a delicate blend of city and country.

The people I know as family, and the people I encounter in this part of the world are some of the most traditional folks I've ever known. Kentuckians are hard-working people, who, most of the time, don't have the resources or money to enjoy the optional opportunities in life, like owning yachts or going out on cross-country vacations with their families. However, where money does not build a house, a family will--and sometimes, that's all you've got.

Clay's Quilt is set in contemporary eastern Kentucky, centered around many characters; but the main protagonist is Clay Sizemore. As he journeys through his young adult life, he ponders the death of his mother, Anneth.

After many years of plugging away at his own view of a meaningless existence, he is lead by his grandmother to a box that mysteriously appears on her front porch. Not knowing how to anticipate what could be inside, he slowly opens it, and begins to chip away at his mother's story. Through the forward chronological motion of the plot, Clay comes to terms with his mother's death, and attempts to create his own "quilt".

A plethora of characters await in Clay's Quilt. However, one of my favorite people is Clay's grandmother, Easter, a God-fearing woman who would do nothing to stand in the way of the Lord. She attends Pentecostal services regularly and is always singing church hymnal specials to Clay. I found it heartwarming that Clay would remember these songs all the way from childhood, especially coming from his grandmother's voice.

Another character who plays a leading role in this novel is Alma, the lonely fiddle player. With all the spirit she can muster, she plays some of the best music around, infusing her very soul into the wailing strings. House's description of her musical ability allowed me to feel every note she played. Although not a crucial element at the beginning of Clay's Quilt, Alma eventually becomes one of Clay's strongest supporters.

There are other characters in Clay's Quilt, who unfortunately seem to detract from the moralistic side of the story, only serving to fan out the already slow-crawling plot. Clay's brother, Cake, is just like him at the beginning of the story, and they both share many nights under the stars talking about life, sex, girls, and whatever else that springs to mind.

They go to bars together, get drunk, and have a "good-ole" time. Of course, Clay really knows this is no way to live. What's disappointing to me is that Clay does not really feel this change until halfway through the novel. By this point, many impatient readers may have fallen by the wayside, tired of waiting on a more interesting plot twist to be thrown their direction.

Clay's sister, Dreama, is relatively unoriginal. She, like every other woman in this story (with the exception of Easter), seems to have trouble finding a man who won't abuse her. Since this is so typical of weak relationships, I found it rather boring and uninspiring to include this situation unfolding in Clay's life. This doesn't happen just once, it happens three times--and in each confrontation, anger rears its ugly head to make a repetitive and depressing statement about spousal abuse.

Other characters, like Evangeline (Anneth's sister), Gabe (Clay's uncle), and Marguerite (a close friend of Anneth's--Cake's mother), and El (Easter's husband) help to flesh out a sense of family through the story. These characters are typical filler material that help drag out the plot and attempt to make it have a sense of wholeness. My favorite character of these four is Marguerite.

The local loner, Marguerite is unfamiliar with her new hometown of Black Banks. When she moves in, nobody wants to talk to her because she dresses funny, and most horrific of all, she doesn't believe in God. Marguerite loves Anneth as a sister, because Anneth was the first person to talk to her. When Marguerite hears of Anneth's death, her world falls apart.

You also have the typical bad boyfriends, like Denzel and Darry, who abuse their girlfriends in one way or another, and either don't care, or don't care until it is too late. These situations are typical to many relationships, so they're people that are nothing special, and are portrayed as such. In all honesty, I wish they weren't included in the story, because I ended up hating these men, anyway.

Unfortunately for Clay's Quilt, the plot gets too muddied for me to want to continue on reading at great lengths without stopping, especially in the first half of the book. While a great sense of community and family is established, the situations, feelings, and dialogue exhibited between the characters is rather bland. There are no shocking or mind-boggling situations that do occur, and those that are frightful seem to be a bit too over-described by the narrator, which ends up leaving the reader's imagination suppressed.

While these descriptions fit well to describe nature and its beauty, they sometimes go too far to account for the feelings a character may going through. For instance, when the story of Anneth's horrible death is retold, House goes into great detail about Easter's emotions, letting the reader know where she goes, how she faints, how she is carried to the sofa, how she dreams, and what position her feet are in when she gets back up out of her emotionally "shocked" state. Again, while this helps to paint a better picture, it seems to be a little too specific for my tastes.

Another problem I had with Clay's Quilt was the atmospheric setting. Living in the mountains is sure to be a life chock full of blizzards, but who deserves to endure over 150 pages of eloquently described snowfall? It is pretty at first, but after awhile it begins to drone like a parked car. I'm not sure if House intended this as a symbolic meaning or not--but either way, it would have been better to experience a difference in atmospheric setting a little earlier in the book. It does happen eventually, but time seems to stand inevitably still in winter--and for me, this is very depressing.

However, Clay's Quilt does not go without its merits. There is a wonderful sense of a loving and caring family that would die for each other, as illustrated through several situations that unfold in the plotline. Characters' physical sketches are crafted masterfully--from early on in the book we can imagine young Clay's warm, bare chest as he escapes from his coal-mining job, listening to his favorite song in the truck. We can see Easter's frail hands doing the dishes and hear her singing "Meeting in the Air", and we can see Alma's supple fingers waving the bow across her melodious fiddle. All of the characters are intricately described, and Silas House paints a definitive picture of each person you will meet. No question about a character will be left unanswered by the end of this novel.

I normally wouldn't spoil the ending, but here, I must give some of it away to reveal a personal tug of the heart.

Probably the most important part of this novel came at the end--and it is when the tears welled in my eyes. Eventually, Clay receives a quilt that his great Uncle Paul has been patching for him throughout the story, and it is composed entirely of his mother's old clothes. His receiving of the quilt is the climactic turning point in the story. When Clay began to cry, I could feel my emotions churning inside as I looked over my shoulder to the quilt laying on my bed.

My mother passed away two years ago, and one of the most cherished things I have that she left behind was the quilt she made for me. As a matter of fact, as I write with it in my lap, I have to look at it and admire all the little stitches in it, all the fabric that was put together--all of her heart that she put into it--is here for me. I'm sure Clay felt the same softness and warmth radiating from his own when he received his.

Quilts are generally thought of as family treasures--we get them from our mothers or grandmothers, and we pass them on to our grandchildren, and their children's children. Clay's Quilt is the same. It is a family tradition; a family story to be passed down from one generation to the next. It is nothing more, and nothing less, and cannot be judged as anything else. If you are looking for a story with a grass-roots, Appalachian style family focus, you owe it to yourself to give Clay's Quilt a try.