Requiem by Fire

Charles Frazier called Cataloochee, Wayne Caldwell’s acclaimed debut, “a brilliant portrait of a community and a way of life long gone, a lost America.” Now, in Requiem by Fire, Caldwell returns to the same fertile Appalachian ground that provided the setting for his first novel, recalling a singular time in American history when the greater good may not have been best for everyone.

    In the late 1920s, Cataloochee, North Carolina, a settlement tucked deep in the Great Smoky Mountains, is home to nearly eleven hundred souls—many of them prosperous farmers whose ancestors broke the first furrows a century earlier. Now attorney Oliver Babcock, Jr., has been given the difficult task of presenting the locals with two options: sell their land to the federal government for the creation of a national park or remain behind at their own financial peril. 

    While some of the area’s inhabitants seem ready to embrace a new and modern life, others, deeply embedded in their rural ways, are resistant. Silas Wright’s cantankerous unwillingness to sell or to follow the new rules leads to some knotty and often amusing predicaments. Jim Hawkins, hired by the Parks commission, has relocated his reluctant wife, Nell, and their children to Cataloochee, but Nell’s unhappiness forces Jim to make a dire choice between his roots and his family. And a sinister force is at work in the form of the deranged Willie McPeters, who threatens those who have decided to stay put.

    Requiem by Fire is a moving, timeless tale of survival and change. With humor and pathos, this magnificent novel transports readers to another time and place—and celebrates Southern storytelling at its finest.
 
 

Charles Frazier called Cataloochee, Wayne Caldwell’s acclaimed debut, “a brilliant portrait of a community and a way of life long gone, a lost America.” Now, in Requiem by Fire, Caldwell returns to the same fertile Appalachian ground that provided the setting for his first novel, recalling a singular time in American history when the greater good may not have been best for everyone.

    In the late 1920s, Cataloochee, North Carolina, a settlement tucked deep in the Great Smoky Mountains, is home to nearly eleven hundred souls—many of them prosperous farmers whose ancestors broke the first furrows a century earlier. Now attorney Oliver Babcock, Jr., has been given the difficult task of presenting the locals with two options: sell their land to the federal government for the creation of a national park or remain behind at their own financial peril. 

    While some of the area’s inhabitants seem ready to embrace a new and modern life, others, deeply embedded in their rural ways, are resistant. Silas Wright’s cantankerous unwillingness to sell or to follow the new rules leads to some knotty and often amusing predicaments. Jim Hawkins, hired by the Parks commission, has relocated his reluctant wife, Nell, and their children to Cataloochee, but Nell’s unhappiness forces Jim to make a dire choice between his roots and his family. And a sinister force is at work in the form of the deranged Willie McPeters, who threatens those who have decided to stay put.

    Requiem by Fire is a moving, timeless tale of survival and change. With humor and pathos, this magnificent novel transports readers to another time and place—and celebrates Southern storytelling at its finest.
 
 

From the Hardcover edition.

Publishers Weekly

Caldwell follows up the well-received Cataloochee with this homespun effort about a close-knit mountain village's fight to keep the land its inhabitants have spent their lives cultivating. In 1928, the residents of Cataloochee, N.C., are given an ultimatum by the National Parks Commission to either resign their farmland for a price, or remain, but have their property leased back to them by the government. At the core of this conflict is Silas Wright, a farmer who locks horns with the Parks Commission, disputes both of the options offered, and refuses to succumb to governmental demands. Attorney Oliver Babcock is also making rounds about town securing agreements to negotiate as well. Wright contemplates a lawsuit against the commission, for which longtime resident Jim Hawkins is now enlisted to be a warden of the park to come. Mild melodrama ensues as the government removes residents from their homes, a mysterious death occurs, Hawkins contends with an unhappy family, and the town fire-starter gets up to his old tricks again. As in his debut, Caldwell again attributes rich historical background to a dizzying array of colorful, authentic Southern characters in an unhurried story about resiliency and the unifying power of community. (Mar.)

Wayne Caldwell was born in Asheville, North Carolina, and educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Appalachian State University, and Duke University. The author of Cataloochee, he began writing fiction in the late 1990s. He has published four short stories and a poem, and won two short story prizes. Caldwell lives near Asheville with his wife, Mary.