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George Ella Lyon 497 George Ella Lyon from Borrowed Children Most people think of George Ella Lyon as an author of children’s books. Indeed, she is, but she’s much more. She’s a poet, a teacher, a playwright, and an author of books for readers of all ages. Hailing from Harlan County, she holds degrees from Centre College, the University of Arkansas, and Indiana University, where she wrote her dissertation on Virginia Woolf. She has taught at the University of Kentucky, Transylvania University, Centre College, and Radford University. She has taught at the Appalachian Writers Workshop in Hindman for many years. Her poetry collections include Mountain (1983) and Catalpa (1993). Her children’s books include Father Time and the Day Boxes (1985), Come a Tide (1990), and Mama Is a Miner (1994). Her Borrowed Children (1988) is a novel for young adults, and With a Hammer for My Heart (1997) is a novel for adults. She credits her mountain background with having given her the gifts, especially the penchant for storytelling, to be a writer. In an interview published in the Kentucky Review in 2000, she said that in the mountains “you ask directions, you get a story.” There are now two writers in the Lyon family. In 2004 her husband, Steve Lyon, a musician and composer, published The Gift Moves, an impressive debut novel of fantasy and myth for young people and adults. The selection below is from George Ella Lyon’s Borrowed Children. h It’s Friday. Fridays are the best days because we know Daddy is coming home. He works all week cutting timber on Big Lick Mountain—too far to come back to Goose Rock every night. I wish he could. The house lights up when Daddy’s here. Even now, just knowing he’s on his way, chores seem easier and we don’t quarrel. I’ve been taking care of my little sisters, Anna and Helen, but they’ve been happy—Helen stringing spools on yarn, Anna looking at the new SearsRoebuck catalogue. “Wish Book,” Daddy calls it. “Wishes are free,” he says. “Look your fill.” And we do. They’ve got things on those slick pages that Goose Rock’s never seen: clothes washers, typewriters, electric lights. But Anna looks at dolls. “I’d give a bushel of money for that bride doll,” she says, pointing to a tall one got up in wads of lace. “And what would you do with her? She’d be thick with coal dust in no time.” In Goose Rock coal dust is as common as dirt. 497 498 The Kentucky Anthology “I’d keep her under my pillow,” Anna insists. “And squash her flat as a board.” “Oh, Mandy . . .” “Remember what Daddy said about Miss Snavely and the Wish Book. You don’t always get what you order.” “What did he say?” “Said she ordered a suit, and when it came, her heart broke because it didn’t have that pretty man in it.” “That’s just a story,” Anna argues. “Nobody’s that dumb.” “No? Then what are they doing here, stuck between two mountains with nothing but a Wish Book to look at?” “We’re not dumb and we’re here.” “That’s because we follow the timber.” “Maybe it’s the trees that are dumb,” Helen suggests. “That’s it exactly,” I tell her. “Dumb maple! Dumb walnut! Knot-head pine.” We’re all laughing when Ben bursts in. “Mandy, I’ve got to talk to you,” he says, his breath coming in heaves. “Right now. Private.” He motions me out on the porch. Ben is fourteen, tall and skinny like me, but that’s okay for a boy. He’s been running, and his hair looks like a blackbird about to take off. “I’m listening,” I say, glancing through the window to make sure the girls don’t knock over a lamp or something. “You know those lunches Mama packs us in school-time—ham biscuit, a jar of milk? Well, that’s all right here in Goose Rock, but when you go to Manchester to school . . . why, there’s boys eating steak between white bread, Mandy, and not out of paper sacks either. They say you can buy that bread sliced and it tastes just like cake. And there we sit with dry biscuits and hard ham. So me and David—I don’t know which of us first—we just thought we’d go to the hotel...

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