This image is the cover for the book The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains, Classics To Go

The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains, Classics To Go

Another piece of Mary Murfree's excellent work (see my review of In the Stranger Peoples' Country). The Prophet of the Great Smokey Mountains is about law - customary, governmental, and divine - and the issue of translating between them. In less straightforward ways, it is also about the conflict between thought and feeling and between perspicacity and inevitable illusion or opacity. The characters are compelling, and Murfree's impressionistic style, of course, is incredible: just look at those first sentences! The resulting contrast between rough characters and rich style draws attention to both the limited ability of individuals to understand their environment and artist's inevitably limited ability to understand individuals. (Goodreads)

Mary Noailles Murfree

Mary Noailles Murfree (January 24, 1850 – July 31, 1922) was an American fiction writer of novels and short stories who wrote under the pen name Charles Egbert Craddock. She is considered by many to be Appalachia's first significant female writer and her work a necessity for the study of Appalachian literature, although a number of characters in her work reinforce negative stereotypes about the region. She has been favorably compared to Bret Harte and Sarah Orne Jewett, creating post-Civil War American local-color literature.

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