The Skyland post. [volume] (West Jefferson, N.C.) 193?-1988, 1938-01-27
Thinks That Shadows Slant
North" Doesn't Give County
Just Credit.
(By Mrs. Chessie NeaD


ing the muddy and windy setting of
the new novel, Shadows Slant
North" by Mary Bledsoe, and the
natural habitat of its characters,
which is a very doubtful honor in
the opinion of some Ashe county
people who have read it.
Anyone who knows anything
about the geography of the state
could not fail to recognize the lay
of the land and some of the people
behind their caricatures. In the
book where the imagination runs
riot what a dearth of it in the Sc
lection of names.
It has been the big idea with
people that write about the noun
taineers' to stress the ignorance,
superstition, want of morals and
awful living conditions that abound
among them.
/. The higher the altitude THE more
slow down" they are. If we could
all live in Charlotte described in
the novel as place of rare lowell
ness with plenty of water melons,
we would doubtless not have so
many faults.
In this story the mountaineers are
allowed to rise slowly in book
learning from about 1900 to the
present day. But those living on
ly a few miles away from the To-
cality where most of the incidents
take place, were astonished at the
latitude taken by miss Lucindy'', a
teacher in the Presbyterian school
that burned in the opening chapter.
What a slam on the educated Pres
byterians for their teacher to say
"taint" and "hit''. Miss Lucindy is
still teaching at the end of the
book, more than thirty years later,
in the state high school that rose
on the ashes of the one burned. She
must have had an unequaled po-
litical pull or gone to summer
school, lot.
And the Primitive Baptists to
which we have always believed
there was no battle-ground in sin.
The heroine, Judy, coming from a
Primitive Baptist family, was so far
ahead of her raising as to live d
week with her soldier-loyer in
Charlotte, w i t h o u benefit of
clergy. If there was ever an Incl
dent of this kind that took place
from Ashe county during the World
War it was never heard of here. AL
ESQ, while we have many homicides,
| the homicidal tendencies e
not confined to the Blue Ridge.
There was never high school prin-
cipal murdered for trying to uplift
and educate his community as was
pictured in the closing chapters
with the Nathan's Creek school as
the setting. There are other Incl
1 dents where the characters have
such narrow escapes from most
everything as to leave the reader
very uneasy about their future.
But that is the way to write best
sellers these days. It is supposed
/ an abundance Of sex and details of
! childbirth thrown in will insure
their sale for while.
| am sorry that the author did
not really know Ashe county after
all, and wish that her very vivid
descriptive powers had been turned
on the best the county has and that
she might have met and known
more of the best people. She evil
IDENTIFY knew little or did not choose
to know the history of the county
beyond Nathan's Creek.
A few years ago there was a cur
rent phrase Lost Provinces, used
then for political purposes. I de-
ny that we have ever been slost".
There was never a time since the
county was settled when people
could not and did not get in and
out with, Of course, more ease as
the years went by.