Milltown Natural: Essays and Stories From a Life by Richard Hague (review)

ing a strong interrelationship: "This is the geography that fits my imagination , or that my imagination has been shaped to fit." As compelling and commanding as the land is, it becomes a metaphor for what Byer calls "those female spirits that haunt these mountains still." Although many of the writers speak of the lasting influence of strong mountain women on their present life and work, perhaps none are as graciously aware as Sidney Saylor Farr, who provides in her essay delicious sketches of Appalachian women. The diversity, humor, and strength which she illustrates is reflected in the book in its entirety. The importance oforal—and aural-history is a very strong theme running through the book. Marilou Awiakta explains this with beautiful simplicity : "Mountain speech carries the sound of the land where it's spoken. That's a primary reason I say 'sound has shaped me'. . . as the elders say, "sound is what moves the heart." Perhaps it is an inherent sensitivity to this sound, and to these stories that compose a collective experience. As Artie Ann Bates says, in explaining the conflict she feels between medicine and writing, "Medicine can be done later, but these stories can not." The reader ofBloodrootis leftprofoundly grateful that Bates and her colleagues have not waited. The sound ofthis book has a lingering effect. With the exception of the introduction (which splendidly sets the tone for the rest of the book), all ofthe entries are in alphabetical order, with a biographical sketch and a photograph ofeach writer preceding her essay. This makes the book a useful reference; many ofthe names are well known and it is wonderful to have them collected into such an appealing bouquet. The real beauty ofthe book, however, lies not in the individual flowers, but in their presentation as an intertwined whole. The reader soon forgets the orderly presentation, and becomes utterly absorbed with the connected voice. —Janey Wilson Richard Hague. Milltown Natural: Essays and Stories From a Life. Huron, Ohio: Bottom Dog Press, 1997. Milltown Natural is a nonlinear autobiography, recounting Hague's Catholic boyhood in multiethnic Steubenville, Ohio; his first experience of death (the Joycean drowning of a beautiful girl in "To Live Like an Animal" and "Old Woman River"), first real job (in a meat plant), first marriage—thorny and short lived—and a hard healing worked out alone on the family land "out Greenbrier" ("Mowing the Bald"). 65 As anyone familiar with Ripening (1984) and Possible Debris (1988) would expect, reading this collection is a rich and rewarding experience. Its theme is the enduring importance of place and family, which Hague explores from many perspectives by looking at "the sediment of influences [which gave his] life its foundation." In "Menagerie" it is the naturalist who speaks ("For me the most beautiful and varied tongue nature spoke was Beetle"); in "Carp, And Other Lessons" it is the sociologist ("[Eating carp] was a class issue and a race issue, and I did not know it at the time"); in "Inventing Ironhead," it is connected to the sense of exile and sadness that separates me from my past"). This searching of the past, this shining the light of consciousness (which Hague calls "the Original Sin") into basements, blind alleys, and brokenness is undertaken to offer a realization to his sons, to the future. In the opening section of "Inventing Ironhead," Hague defines his task and his reason for taking it on: It is not enough, then, that I have the responsibility of guiding my sons through life, protecting them in their present childhood while preparing them for their futures, but I see now that I am also bound not merely to guide them through but to create for them a past. In so doing, he invites the reader on a similar journey, for surely Hague's recollections, whether fictionalized or not, wake up something in the readers' history. For instance, "Aunt Aggie," cursed with "the ache for drink," whose "thirst was lined to her largeness ofsoul," summons particular ghosts for me. "Menagerie," in which he describes boyhood efforts to bring wild creatures into the human household, takes me back to the days of calling all creatures brother, and of...