Raft Tide and Railroad: How We Lived and Died. Collected Memories and Stories of an Appalachian Family and Its Seventh Son (review)

In publishing this family history, Appalachian poet and academic Eddy Pendarvis has been guided by sage advice from a grandmother, Jet Johnson, known only to her through family stories and photographs. Not long before she was murdered, Johnson asked one of her sons to note the strength of a bundle of twigs and see it as a metaphor for family. In Raft Tide and Railroad, the author has preserved her family's history and recognized its strength through the accounts that span seven generations' experiences in Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia from the early 1800s to the present.

In weaving together the Johnson story, Pendarvis is also telling a larger, communal story of those who settled in the Appalachian region. It is one of homesteading in an untamed wilderness, timbering the virgin forests and moving the logs downstream on swollen rivers, and recalling the cost of civil strife. Her storytelling recounts life on the farms, in the small towns created by the coming of the railroads, and in the coal camps. As the title promises, the memoir also focuses on the life of one "special" uncle, the seventh son of a seventh son and youngest child of Jet Johnson; his story is a rags-to-riches account of a self-proclaimed "hillbilly" who built a horse-breeding empire after selling a successful mining company.

Without apology Pendarvis opens up the lives of the wise and the foolhardy through the stories she has mined from genealogy research, family stories and lore, letters, newspaper articles, and her own vivid imagination. In the telling, she braids genres and shifts perspectives from first-person to third, sometimes adding comment but often merely reminding the reader of her role as family member. One example can be seen in the episode preceding the death of her grandmother in an assassination-style murder. Pendarvis begins: "Though I was there the day Jet was killed, I was a baby, too young to understand what was happening." Within a few lines she writes of her parents: "They climbed the porch steps, Marionette holding their five-month-old baby girl close to keep her warm in the February air." Although potentially confusing, these shifts effectively support Pendarvis's intent of being recognized as both family member and storyteller.

Although the family history narrative introduces seven generations of Johnsons, the two individuals who dominate the story are mother and son, Jet and Donald Johnson. More than two-thirds of the book is dedicated to the memories and exploits of the uncle whose accomplishments have received broad attention. His story overshadows that of his siblings, leaving their stories and others' regrettably undeveloped.

Pendarvis has added an extensive bibliography, genealogy information, and a gallery of photographs. Her multi-genre approach to this storytelling can serve as a template for others who want to preserve their family's history. The blending of recollections, published information, and distinguishable creative fiction has enabled this writer to recreate a work of "people, places, and things in eastern Kentucky [and West Virginia] that are mostly gone now, but continue to affect what's still here."