Appalachian Heritage

When Pamela Duncan took Lee Smith's workshop in fiction writing at North Carolina State University, she brought in what she hesitantly called "chunks," unlike the short stories other members of the class were writing. She was encouraged to continue producing her chunks, and these eventually became her master's thesis. Her first novel, Moon Women (2001), is a revision of that thesis. To publish a well-received novel from a school assignment is a notable accomplishment; to follow that achievement by producing two subsequent novels, both award winning, is nothing short of spectacular. In each of her succeeding novels, Plant Life (2003) and The Big Beautiful (2007), the chunks are evident, put together with progressive skill. This essay will examine four common characteristics of the three novels: balanced structure, colloquial language, humor, and the theme of love both within and without the family.

Although details and settings differ, the plots are basically the same: a young woman finds herself in a crisis situation, moves back to live with some family members, becomes involved in a new job, encounters an attentive man whom she originally resists but eventually accepts, and ends better off than she was when the book began. This bare bones outline does not do justice to the rich diversity of these books. Ashley, Laurel, and Cassandra, the protagonists, are surrounded by an extraordinary group of characters whose words and actions differentiate the novels.

In an unpublished essay, "Spinning Words into Gold," Duncan has written about her writing method. She explains

So much of writing seems to come from this mysterious place inside, this storytelling mechanism that already knows the whole story but only doles it out to me in bits and pieces. I pick up the pen, I start making words on a page, and I see where the writing takes me. I don't [End Page 27] write in a linear fashion at all. The bits and pieces grow into chunks, then I work on organizing the chunks, like patches in a quilt, and then I try and stitch them all together.

This quilt metaphor, indicating itself her Appalachian mountain origins, is useful in emphasizing both the rich content and careful organization necessary for the completed work. A structure of this sort allows her to use multiple points of view, a combination of narrative and rumination, and a way to go back and forth in time. This form gives her freedom to explore widely, and it is successful because she stitches her chunks together so carefully.

Elsewhere in her "Spinning Words" essay, Duncan deals with what Henry James called the germ, or donnée, of a particular novel. She writes

One day about a week before the workshop started, I was lying in the bathtub daydreaming when suddenly I saw a near-collision of three women on a country road at night. A mother and daughter in a car heading one way, an old woman with a walker heading the other way. The car rocks to a stop, the old woman stares mesmerized into the headlights. It became the first scene I wrote for the book.

This scene comes early in Moon Women, when the three principal characters, Ruth Ann, driving with her daughter, Ashley, nearly runs over her befogged mother, Marvelle, who is on the road with her walker (p. 36). The scene is replicated near the end of the book when Ruth Ann, driving Ashley to the hospital to have her baby, spots the disheveled Marvelle in her red and white polyester suit struggling down the road (p. 281). These paired events exemplify one way that Duncan controls her materials.

The challenge of writing with multiple points of view is handled adroitly and differently in each of the three novels. Moon Women presents Ruth Ann, mother of Ashley and daughter to Marvelle Moon. All are principal points of view characters, but when Marvelle remembers her past life her thoughts are indicated by italics. Plant Life, where the three generations of women share the focus with their friends in the mill, employs a different device. In it the deceased grandmother, [End Page 28] Alberta...