Lake Views
A Consideration of Susan Coryell’s Valley Novels
By Mark Anderson, January 4, 2016
Enthusiasts of history and the paranormal, or simply fans of great writing overall, could do no better than to get ahold of Susan Coryell’s latest novels: Beneath the Stones (2015), and A Red, Red Rose (2012). These extraordinary and closely-knit stories follow the fortunes of families in a valley community is southwestern Virginia. The time is modern day, but the scope of history reaches back to the years of slavery and the times of the Civil War. The scene is bucolic – forests and back roads and foothills – and Coryell brings her own sense of such places to bear, as threads of history and glimpses of character are brought to light. An unsettling aura of change has rumbled through the valley in recent decades, and when young Ashby Overton visits her ancestral home for the summer, she brings with her the energy and determination to find out how the valley folk are weathering the storm.
This is the valley that was fair ground for the marching feet of Union soldiers, late in the Civil War, as they sought to lay the Confederacy low with a final swath of destruction. And this same ground may well have seen a solitary soldier or two, straggling through the brush and the mists, wearing the uniform coat of either the South or North. On assignment? Or simply looking for a hovel to find solace and a place to sleep? That endgame disorder would have been where the pendulum of Coryell’s history is at one extreme. At its mid-point swing we find ourselves in the early years of the twenty-first century, and the devastation is called the “economic crisis.”
As Beneath the Stones opens, we find that the families of the valley can no longer depend on their mansions, their manners, or their good looks to make a living. The business of agriculture has worn thin, and the livestock trade has been usurped by big-time corporations. Real estate is seen as a recourse for survival. “Can’t miss” is the siren call; “speculation” is in the fine print. “Disrespect” may well be heard at many a tavern or dinner table for miles around. Our area of interest is the fictitious Moore Mountain Lake, formed a few years ago with the damming up of three rivers, flooding a good portion of the valley, leaving whatever had not been moved or accounted for under acres of deep water. The project was seen as a model of compliance of speculators and municipal councils, with the muscle of the power company doing its part. The beauty of the lakeshore and the tasteful development of houses brought prosperity. Homes were built to suit: lakefront; lake view, lake nearby. Some old-timers remain unmoved and disgruntled.
The Overton family estate, called Overhome,is still above water. When Ashby first visited her aunt and uncle there, she had no idea that she would one day be heir to the place. Her enchantment had begun, though. As she first sees the house upon her arrival, we might think that she were being driven through the elms approaching Howards End, from E. M. Forster’s novel. Ashby writes:
The ghostly whiteness of the clapboards shone against a dark background of clouds and trees. Black shutters framed endless rows of windows, and a massive slate roof rose so steeply that I could not determine where it ended and the gloomy sky began. A half dozen dormers thrust forth from the peaked roof, their window glass as opaque as the night. In graceful symmetry, four magnificent stone chimneys punctuated the sweep of roof before disappearing into the trees.
A Red, Red Rose 11)
With that, Ashby has earned the right to narrate the rest of the stories. The tumult that ensued during that summer visit is the substance of A Red, Red Rose. We read there that Ashby just about escapes Overhome, bruised and bewildered, but with heart a-flutter and her sensibilities intact. She returns now, five years later, in Beneath the Stones, and sets about to reclaim a firm financial footing for her inherited estate. Her plan is to get in on the real estate boom, by selling certain parcels for residential development. How she fares and what she finds make for fine storytelling indeed.
Coryell’s novels are character-driven. Plot lines and discoveries come into view as Ashby reveals them in the narrative or in her diary. She delivers impressions and ponders many a conversation. The paranormal is swirling around Ashby, with flickering candles and odors; rose petals and bits of song. Ashby needs to delve into these odd occurrences. And she finds that most folks around the estate go about their daily lives with an air of preoccupation. They might be talking with her in the parlor or at the stables, but always looking past her, as though something in the meadow might hold the answer to the future and their place in it.
How is Ashby seen, outside her own gaze or her diary? We scarcely know what other conversations might be, but “darling,”and “good companion” might be mentioned. So might “meddlesome,” and “interloper.” We recall, from late in A Red, Red Rose, that Ashby has a nice society lunch in town with her Aunt Monica. She heads out right after, to spend the afternoon at the historical society. She herself is distracted these days. She’s afraid that zephyrs in the corridor might be warning her about heavier signs ahead. So she wants to find out hard facts about the Moore Mountain Lake project. The power company records could be rather, um, entertaining. She jots down numbers: 1371 speaks volumes. Maybe she’ll stop at the old two-pump gas station on the way home and play that number.
Of all the rich characters in these stories, it is interesting to see how minor characters can have great impact. One such fellow is Fred Taylor, a local attorney with a good eye for property. His dealings, call it what you will - collusion, extortion? - with Ashby’s uncle Hunter will give us a link to the generation of Fred’s father Bill, and how he in turn was a cohort of Hunter’s father, the Overton patriarch, Thomas. These history bits are delivered by Ashby’s awfully good friend Luke. And that information also helps to propel us between novels. Ashby is now learning about land-grabs, deadline foreclosures, and bribing officials for rezoning permits, all in the name of big land sales surrounding the beautiful Moore Mountain Lake. And be careful, girl, not to leave careless traces around Hunter’s study.
Early in Beneath the Stones we meet another minor character, a realtor named Paul Gordon. He is helping Ashby and her dad coordinate decisions about boundaries for the parcels of Overhome to be put on the market. Ashby has, not long before, survived a sumptuous dinner party hosted by Monica at Overhome. Ashby was anxious about the gathering, because it was her opportunity to announce her plans for selling a fifty-acre parcel of Overhome, which would include the overseer’s cottage. Her news was accompanied by a mishap: the dining room chandelier was shaken loose and was left swinging over Monica’s exquisite table. People shouted, Monica wept, and Ashby knew that her fear of heavier occurrences was coming true.
Now, she and Paul and her dad are poking around the cottage. Paul knows about chestnut shingles and musty smells; and he also knows the great price the parcel would bring, with the slope of the meadow and the view, once the cottage were demolished, of course. Ashby is thinking other thoughts, and she gets a good ethereal slap in the face for it, leaving a right red mark. She knows that kids still use the place as their hidey-hole; and she knows that a couple of women-folk from the house used to come here to read poetry and dream young-girl dreams. She’s furious about the slap – a spirit saying, “Stay away.”
Of more concern to Paul is that someone, or something, has been pulling up the surveyor’s stakes. The area needs to be protected, round-the-clock. Who could they call upon? Ashby and her dad ponder this briefly. Who has a horse, a pup tent, and a pistol? Who owns a junkyard dog, and would do the patrol for love of Ashby? Enter Eddie Mills, the lovelorn Overton horse and handyman guy, with the pock-marked face and a fierce sense of family loyalty. Eddie has been on the scene since early in A Red, Red, Rose, and he is perhaps the most complex character in the stories. He is much on Ashby’s mind. They are cousins: “…something he will never let me forget,” she writes. The clash of families goes back to the days of Thomas Overton and Bill Taylor going against Otis Mills, about land. Ashby can joke and Eddie understands. She’s rather quaint when she writes: “Will he always carry a torch for me?” She is somewhat less than eloquent when she says to her dad: “I admit, I’m feeling guilty as all get-out about bringing Eddie in.”
Ashby has, however, leveraged her feelings for Eddie and the Mills family before. She has given the Mills family money from Overton’s lean funds; she paid for Eddie to have braces put on his teeth. Now that the Overton stables are becoming a going concern, with master horseman Carlos boarding horses and giving lessons, more work will fall to Eddie. Ashby knows that he will handle it. She doesn’t write about it much more; perhaps her introspection is manifest in that she treats him well.
It is a paradox, then, that Eddie is one of only two people (Hunter is the other) who will take measure of Ashby and speak sharply to her. His contempt for the Overtons is simmering on one occasion when he tells Ashby about the icy-road car wreck that took the lives of Ashby’s biological parents. Ashby shrinks in horror. Who was baby-sitting two-year-old Ashby when her parents were called out, to “come quick!” Who made the call? Ashby is incredulous and falls back on the age-old, uncomprehending response: “It was an accident!” Eddie has told her, and he shakes her wilting ego again: “You’re only half Overton. Other half’s Mills!” Car crashes and land grabs; inheritance be damned. What’s going on?
Readers may play it as it lays. They may also rest assured that Eddie will go on patrol. Ashby tries to explain to him about the evil that’s out there near the cottage. Eddie’s foray into securing the perimeter works out alright. He learns about the paranormal in one lesson. His dog goes nuts. And he tells Ashby about it in his own halting and endearing way.
After the significance of the cottage comes to light, Coryell treats us to a lively recounting of archeologists and historians converging on the place. Letters are found; family meetings are held. Local historian Hal Reynolds leads the project, and becomes a major player. A local musician who is also a genealogist brings valuable information. His name is Stover, from up around Luray.
Readers may have thus far had an inkling that there must have been some strong Overton women to offset the monstrous ways of their men. And Coryell surely gives us moving portraits of women from different generations; and their diaries are great finds. There is Lenore, Thomas’s wife. Angelina writes a diary that dates her at Overhome in the 1840s. And the living, steadfast companion of Ashby as she lives and breathes through her seasons at Overhome is named Miss Emma. She knows history, and she stands firm beside Ashby when Hunter speaks menacingly. And there is the woman who has protected Overton women through the ages. Emma tells Ashby about the Lady – Rosabelle – a truly restless spirit who has taken upon herself the mission of protection, because she, so many years ago, suffered a moment’s inattention.