Category Archives: 1980-1989

1980-1989

Randall Kenan. A Visitation of Spirits. New York : Vintage Contemporaries, 2000.

Kenan’s acclaimed first novel is the story of an African American family in the fictional town of Tims Creek in rural eastern North Carolina. Horace Cross, the sixteen-year-old protagonist of the book, is haunted by what may be actual demons, while at the same time trying to come to terms with his homosexuality. He seeks advice and comfort from his older cousin James, a schoolteacher and preacher, who fears that other family members will have a hard time understanding. This richly written novel is told in several shifting voices and styles.

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Filed under 1980-1989, 1989, Coastal Plain, Kenan, Randall, Novels Set in Fictional Places

Allan Gurganus. Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. New York: Knopf, 1989.

Ninety-nine year old Lucy Marsden spins an epic tale that covers the Civil War, slavery, marriage, and death. With an energetic and humorous style, she tells the story of her remarkable life. Married at fifteen to a Confederate veteran thirty-five years her senior, Lucy has survived long enough to be the oldest living Confederate widow. The novel alternates between past and present, telling the story of Captain Marsden’s experiences in the war, Lucy’s childhood, her close friendship with a former slave, and her life at present, where she is living in a nursing home in fictional Falls, N.C., a town in the eastern part of the state probably based on the author’s hometown of Rocky Mount.  The book was made into a movie/miniseries in 1994.

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Filed under 1980-1989, 1989, Gurganus, Allan, Historical, Novels Set in Fictional Places

Marianne Gingher. Bobby Rex’s Greatest Hit. New York: Atheneum, 1986.

Everyone in the small town of Orfax, N.C. is astir when local rock-and-roller Bobby Rex hits the big time with his song “Pally Thompson.” The only one who isn’t thrilled about it is Pally Thompson, who insists that she didn’t go nearly as far with Bobby Rex as the song would suggest. Set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the novel follows Pally’s attempts to redeem her reputation, but is in effect a rich portrait of adolescent small town life in the postwar South. Fictional Orfax is about twenty miles from Greensboro, the author’s hometown. Bobby Rex’s Greatest Hit won the 1987 Sir Walter Raleigh award for the best work of fiction by a North Carolinian.

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Filed under 1980-1989, 1986, Children & Young Adults, Gingher, Marianne, Guilford, Novels Set in Fictional Places

Kaye Gibbons. A Virtuous Woman. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 1989.

Ruby Pitt Woodrow and Blinking Jack Stokes tell, in alternating chapters, the stories of their lives. Ruby’s chapters are told from her perspective as she is dying of cancer at age 45, while Jack’s reminiscences are set during the period just after Ruby’s death. These stories are set largely on tobacco farms in eastern North Carolina and describe a fondly remembered marriage, which stands in contrast to the characters’ otherwise difficult lives.

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Filed under 1980-1989, 1989, Coastal Plain, Gibbons, Kaye

Clyde Edgerton. Raney. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1985.

Raney Bell discovers, a little too late, that she didn’t know her fiancé Charles Shepherd as well as she thought. This novel is a chronicle of the first two years of their marriage as the innocent and cheerful Raney and the moderately worldly Charles quarrel about religion, race, sex, and family as they adjust to life together. Raney has a funny, distinctive, and unapologetically Southern narrative voice. The novel is set in the fictional eastern North Carolina town of Listre.

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Filed under 1980-1989, 1985, Coastal Plain, Edgerton, Clyde, Novels Set in Fictional Places

Fred Chappell. I Am One of You Forever. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.

Set in the North Carolina mountains in the 1940s, this novel-in-stories follows a boy named Jess through his daily life and encounters with his quirky family and neighbors. The book is a series of short pieces about the memorable characters Jess and his family encounter, and the land on which they live. Chappell is an award-winning poet and is noted for the lyricism he brings to his prose.

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Filed under 1980-1989, 1985, Chappell, Fred, Mountains