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Silas House 511 Silas House from Clay’s Quilt Silas House of Lily, in the Kentucky mountains, was one of the biggest literary discoveries of the late twentieth century in Kentucky—and American—letters. The publication of his first novel, Clay’s Quilt, in 2001 was greeted with almost universal enthusiasm and approval. Lee Smith called him “a young writer of immense gifts,” and Robert Morgan said that he was “one of the truest and most exciting new voices in American fiction.” The novel is focused on Clay Sizemore, who has lost both parents by the time he is four; he has to learn that, like a quilter who takes odd pieces of cloth and sews them into a beautiful quilt, he must learn to shape a life for himself out of the bits and pieces of himself and his experiences with people who love and care for him. His second novel also received general acclaim by readers and critics alike. A Parchment of Leaves (2002) proves that his first novel was not a fluke and that he has talent and staying power. In this novel House shows the range of his talent by writing a historical novel set in the early 1900s and by taking on the persona of Vine, a young Cherokee woman who is determined to have her white man, regardless of the barriers and consequences. The title of his third novel, The Coal Tattoo (2004), comes from the dark imprint left on the miners who survive a mine collapse. In Black Bank, however, everyone is marked by coal, including the two very different sisters, Anneth and Easter, whose lives are at the core of the story and who can’t live together or apart. It is exciting to watch such a young writer as House grow into a major author. The selection below is the prologue to Clay’s Quilt; it narrates the accident that will determine a young boy’s future. h They were in a car going over Buffalo Mountain, but the man driving was not Clay’s father. The man was hunched over the steering wheel, peering out the frosted window with hard, gray eyes. The muscle in his jaw never relaxed, and he seemed to have an extra, square-shaped bone on the side of his face. “No way we’ll make it without getting killed,” the man said. His lips were thin and white. “We ain’t got no choice but to try now,” Clay’s mother, Anneth, said. “We can’t pull over and just set on the side of the road until it thaws.” Clay listened to the tires crunching through the snow and ice as they moved slowly on the winding road. It sounded as if they were driving on a highway made of broken glass. On one side of the road there rose a wall of 511 512 The Kentucky Anthology cliffs, and on the other side was a wooden guardrail. It looked like the world dropped off after that. They met a sharp curve and the steering wheel spun around in the man’s hands. His elbows went high into the air as he tried to straighten the car. The two women in the back cried out “Oh Lord!” in unison as one was thrown atop the other to one side of the car. Anneth pressed her slender fingers deep into Clay’s arms, and he wanted to scream, but then the car was righted on course. The man looked at Anneth as if it were her fault. The women in the back had been carrying on all the way up the mountain , and now they laughed wildly at themselves for being scared. They acted like going over the crooked, ice-covered highway was the best time they had had in ages, and the man kept telling them to shut up. It seemed they lit one cigarette after another, so many that Clay couldn’t tell if the mist swirling around in the cab of the car was from their smoking or their breathing. The heater in the little car didn’t work, and when one of the women hollered to the man to give it another try, the vents rattled and coughed, pushing out a chilling breeze. Clay could see his own breath clenching out silver in front of him until it made a white fist on the windshield. The man wiped the glass off every few minutes, and when he did, he let out...

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