Disconcerted, I went home and read Jim the Boy again, hoping that I, too, would respond like my acquaintance. It didn't happen. Well, I think I know. Jim and Aliceville are not the world that they remember, but it is the world that they prefer. Relatives adore us and the trees and the sky bend benevolently over us.
Playmates are plentiful, friends are loyal.
We carefully edit the past. Omit the lost schoolyard fights and the cruel taunts, erase sickness and boredom, and improve our own courage, wit and good humor. What a wonderful thing then, to have a writer who readily provides us with a valentine of the past. I think of my own mother's letters in which she attempted to deal with my father's death awkward and stilted. Occasionally, readers tell me that they are not interested in literature that realistically captures life in Appalachia.