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As an adult, Sholl not only watches for that opening but seeks it: for her grandmother in the wind of "Hanging Out the Wash," for the slaughtered children in "Job's Wife," for her father in "Album." Her witnesses to the possibility of such revelation are her grandmother-'coming to the end of spring/ [she] kicks off her shoes, steps out ofher faltering body" ("Spring Fragments") and the Biblical Tabitha-"God mended her. Not one stitch shows"-("Tonight I Am Mending Clothes"). Relativity, resurrection, laundry: this poet tries every door, and always the spirit answers. But the search is seldom easy. As she tells us of Saint Peter in "The Root Canal:" They say they had to turn him upside down and hammer and shake before his soul would come out... Likewise, these poems hammer and shake, moving our belongings to look for angels. And theyknow that sometimes we must throw out the furniture, let go ofour hoarded goods and selves. This is the burden of "The Flood" (Big Stone Gap, Virginia 1977):" Tonight, everything lost, wanting rises, bursts into fullness. Don't move, Love. Let nothing divide us. Don't even speak my name. Tonight because we let go everything returns with wings, a sprig in its mouth then leaves. Loss becomesreunion,devastation turns to rebirth, somehow, sometime. Rooms Overhead does not give us answers; itunearthsandpolishesthequestions. For all its asking, this collection shows us that our weakness for answers may cost us another kind of knowledge. Thus the speaker in "The Common" closes the book with this arrival at light: blazing on water spread before me when I get to the end of myself and lean at the rail of the last word trusting what I don't understand. Betsy Sholl's earlier books are Changing Faces and Appalachian Winter, both from Alice James Books, 138 Mount Auburn St., Cambridge, MA 02138. A New Jersey native, she lived in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, for seven years. -George Ella Lyon Shirley, Patricia. Dear Flora Mae and Other Stories. Seven Buffaloes Press, PO Box 249, Big Timber, Montana, 59011. $6.75. In a blurb on the back cover of Dear Flora Mae is a comment from Wilma Dykeman, well-known writer of both fiction and non-fiction of the Southeast. She says: "...Patricia Shirley...has listened well to the speech of her region and captures in her stories glimpses of the pleasures and hardships, humor and mystery ofpeople's lives as they might be remembered , told and retold by neighbors and kinfolks." This is true. The reader has little doubt that Shirley knows what she is talking about. Her characters are believable , even though one assumes that the storyteller is exaggerating, as most storytellers do. That exaggeration seems to be more a matter of selectivity than outright untruth, for the reader can accept the assertion that every one of the lines in every one of the stories was spoken by some such character at some such time. The entire collection of Flora Mae stories is fun to read. There are a few sad and a few grotesque moments, as in "Miss Pitts' Last Funeral" and "The Spree," but by and large, the stories are pure enjoyment . It is, perhaps, unfortunate that the overall impression of Appalachia created by 65 this collection is strongly negative. The reader may admire the courage and stamina of a given character, such as Corine in "Retribution," but even she is so backwoodsy that her wisdom is outdone by her remoteness. As a whole, the characters seem like specimens in an exhibit rather than like neighbors and friends. This flaw comes from the fact that the stories have been printed as a collection. They read better, I think, individually than they do in combination. This is particularly evident in the use ofAppalachian speech patterns. A little dialect goes a long way, and when it is "stacked up," as it is in this group of stories, it becomes an obstruction. PatriciaShirleyisafine storyteller,however . Eachofthepieces inDear FloraMae is well worth reading, not only for the characterizationsandtheplots, but also for the strong value orientation revealed in each tale. While the reader may react initially as didShakespeare'sPuck: "What fools these...

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