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I worked at a bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky from 2002-2003, and during that year Silas House was a bestseller. I even got to meet him briefly, as he made more than one appearance at our store while I worked there. But I never read any of his books. I was in that time in my life when I still hoped to make it as a professional philosopher, and so I was putting away most fiction as something I wouldn't have time to read until at least tenure, if not retirement.

Well, the philosopher thing didn't work out, but it took me six years to realize that I was now at liberty to read all those books I had been postponing to retirement. As part of my Reading Books I Had Been Putting Off While I am Still Alive Tour, I finally made my way back to Silas House's Clay's Quilt, and I am glad I did.

I grew up in Kentucky, although not in Appalachia, but this book still felt like a homecoming in a lot of ways. The book tells the story of young Clay Sizemore and his effort to put together the fragments of his life and family, but the book is more a love note to eastern Kentucky. The writing is airy, poetic; the mountains and hollers of his (fictional) Crow County are a character in their own right. I read some of the well-observed descriptions of the sounds and smells in this book with a shock of complete recognition. I know this place; I have been here before.

The same goes for the people. House depicts the passion and generosity of spirit of people in eastern Kentucky in a way that I suspect few outsiders believe but which is utterly accurate. (Folks, read this book before you read that travesty by J.D. Vance.) And House's ear for dialogue! He makes but sparing use of phonetic "dialect" dialogue (in an interview at the end of the book he said that he tried to write all the dialogue in phonetic dialect, but it made his book sound 'like a script for Hee Haw'). I read the dialogue in this book and within one or two lines spoken by a character, I know *exactly* what they sound like. House's dialogue is deceptively simple, subtle, artful.

The story of the book is its only shortcoming. It's meaningful and moving, but a little thin and scattered. With a stronger story, House could be genuinely great. I look forward to reading more.