#BookReview ‘Sidle Creek’ by Jolene McIlwain

About the book…

Set in the bruised, mined, and timbered hills of Appalachia in western Pennsylvania, Sidle Creek is a tender, truthful exploration of a small town and the people who live there, told by a brilliant new voice in fiction.

In Sidle Creek, McIlwain skillfully interrogates the myths and stereotypes of the mining, mill, and farming towns where she grew up. With stories that take place in diners and dive bars, town halls and bait shops, McIlwain’s writing explores themes of class, work, health, and trauma, and the unexpected human connections of small, close-knit communities. All the while, the wild beauty of the natural world weaves its way in, a source of the town’s livelihood – and vulnerable to natural resource exploitation.

With an alchemic blend of taut prose, gorgeous imagery, and deep sensitivity for all of the living beings within its pages, Sidle Creek will sit snugly on bookshelves between Annie Proulx, Joy Williams, and Louise Erdrich.

Being a bit of a fan of Annie Proulx and Louise Erdrich, I was overjoyed to be offered the opportunity to read and review ‘Sidle Creek’, due to be published on May 16th by Melville House.

This is an astonishingly accomplished collection which puts me in mind of Louise Erdrich, for her intimate and quiet portraiture of Appalachian folk.

The starkness and remoteness of the mountains and rivers, the woods and the wildlife, contrast with the influx of human life, and when you think of nature ‘red in tooth and claw’, it is really the people there, the humans, with their tales to tell which bleed across every page.

There are 22 stories that are told with the best kind of narrative voice which underpins men, women, children and teens alike. From the opening salvo, ‘Sidle Creek’ the contrast between the title creek and a young woman whose other has chosen Jesus over her, navigates a passage to womanhood guided by her father and his understanding of nature, is stark. There is no explanation for why the creek  has acted in unusual ways, the father is trying his best before he explores more traditional and medical routes for answers, exploring the way fish are caught and trapped by their nature as well as what is laid for them on the flies that fishers use.

This theme of nature threaded through the human experience is further relayed in stories such as ‘Seed To Full’, where a father uses his knowledge of wood and carpentry to create a coffin for his baby son. The heart-breaking narrative is not told to pull the strings of the reader’s heart, there is no emotive bullying or manipulation, this just is, cruel as it is, life told through the links we make to those in our communities and those we make with the world around us. Isolated it may be, but the way blood calls to blood, the way people help each other through the worst -and best-days is juts beautifully rendered, told with a quiet strength, and lingers long after the telling.

In ‘The Fractal Geometry Of Grief’, a widower believes the doe who visits him, is the reincarnation of his wife.

In ‘Sostentuto’, an affair is compared to the difference between repairing and restoring pianos, and that of playing it. Giving others the ability to create whilst denying himself the chance to do  more than play once a month, is the difference between ‘love’ and ‘committment’. It’s a beautifully rendered metaphor played out over a mere 2 pages, yet Jolene places more depth, resonance and characterisation here than many novelists could in their toe breaking tomes.

My personal favourite is the astonishingly heartfelt ‘You Four Are The One‘, melding folklore, myth and hearsay into this tale of 4 teen girls on the cusp of becoming themselves, all feeling they lack something, who spend their last summer before entering 6th grade, supporting a neighbour named Cinta Johns who is on permanent bedrest to allow her high risk pregnancy to progress as far as medicine will allow. The nature of nurturing is based on sheer will power to will this baby on, to be the one who makes it, to stand for the 4 who did not. These girls are heroes as they are relentlessly caring , assisting to build the nursery, supporting Cinta’s husband and creating an environment into which their baby will j0t only be welcomed, but is already loved. There is a peace and an ease which comes alongside the economy of these stories that allows the tale to just flow. It doesn’t rush you along, like the title suggests, the flow of the creek sidles, and moves you along to bear witness to the major moments in life for these characters who live briefly, bravely and beautifully on each wonderful page.

About the author…

Jolene McIlwain’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appears in numerous online and print literary journals including West Branch, Florida Review, Cincinnati Review, CRAFT, Smokelong Quarterly, New Orleans Review, LITRO, and more.

Her work was included in 2019’s Best Small Fictions Anthology and named finalist for 2018’s Best of the Net, Glimmer Train’s and River Styx’s contests, and semifinalist in Nimrod’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize and two American Short Fictions contests. She’s received a Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council grant, the Georgia Court Chautauqua faculty scholarship, and Tinker Mountain’s merit scholarship.

She’s taught literary theory/analysis at Duquesne and Chatham Universities, and she worked as a radiologic technologist before attending college (BS English, minor in sculpture, MA Literature). She was born, raised, and currently lives in a small town in the Appalachian plateau of Western Pennsylvania.

She loves to do craft and literature workshops/lectures and would love to chat with you about writing (or her love of animals, gardening, motocross, scuba diving, music, and all things nature).

Link-https://www.jolenemcilwain.com/

Twitter @jolene_mcilwain @melvillehouse