Slender Is The Thread: Tales from a Country Law Office
Caudill first came to widespread public notice in 1962, with the publication of his passionate and moving treatise on Appalachia, Night Comes to the Cumberlands. In his new book, he returns yet again to his native Eastern Kentucky, but his tone is altogether different now: mellow, sometimes gently elegiac, frequently funny, nearly always charming. Caudill's previous rage at the appalling conditions, past and present, of life in the Southern mountains appears to have evaporated. There's hardly a vestige of the ferocious attack on the coal bosses and failing social institutions that he sustained in the earlier book. The courthouse types and country doctors, who appeared in a far harsher light in Night Comes, now seem sympathetic. Even the incredible massacres engineered by the Kentucky feudists seem somehow less terrible here; more like tall tales from a mythic past. Caudill's gallery of country lawyers, their clients and memorable cases will charm and intrigue his readers.Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.