Rebecca Kightlinger, Author of The Bury Down Chronicles Series
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​Rebecca Kightlinger

GodPretty in the Tobacco Field                               Kim Michele Richardson

6/6/2016

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GodPretty in the Tobacco Field
Kim Michele Richardson, Kensington Books, 2016, $15.00, pb, 278pp, 9781617737350
 
I’ve been working in the fields since knee-high, and ain’t nothing but all kinds of GodUgly keeps happening around here.


It’s hard to imagine a patch of earth less likely to produce GodPrettty than Gunnar Royal’s snake-infested tobacco field in Nameless, Kentucky. Yet it is in that field that Gunnar strives to cultivate GodPretty, his term for strict Christian obedience and spiritual purity, in his orphaned niece, RubyLyn, the story’s fifteen-year-old narrator and protagonist.
    Through scripture, toil, and frequent mouth-washings with a “tincture of biting herbs steeped in moonshine,” the former state executioner tries to break RubyLyn of her aspirations and her sass. His goal? To keep her in line until she can one day take over his tobacco operations.  RubyLyn, though, has other ideas. Determined to escape Appalachia’s crushing poverty, child abuse, and bleak prospects, she has set her eye on winning the tobacco competition at the 1969 Kentucky State Fair and on using her winnings to get out of Nameless and become an artist.
     The story opens with first-person narration heavy with the diction of the Kentucky hills, bringing the reader immediately into RubyLyn’s world. A few chapters later, while the reader is still enjoying the dialect, Richardson wisely reins it in, skillfully retaining RubyLyn’s colorful narrative voice while allowing dialogue to carry the most eloquent rural colloquialisms.
     Filled with the music of Appalachia, the wrath-of-God discipline of a sinner trying to keep a youngster on the straight and narrow, and the bred-in-the-bone dignity of a downtrodden community so secluded that its barefoot children don’t even realize they’re considered “poor,” GodPretty in the Tobacco Fields, a memorable story of secrets and scandal, reckoning and redemption, is fine Southern fiction.

                                                                                                                                                 Rebecca Kightlinger

Originally published in Historical Novels Review,  Online Issue 76, May, 2016
Kightlinger, Rebecca. "Godpretty in the Tobacco Fields." Historical Novels Review 76 (May 2016): https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/godpretty-in-the-tobacco-fields/.

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    Author

    Rebecca Kightlinger
    Member of the National Book Critics Circle

    Categories

    All
    Across The China Sea
    A Deadly Affection
    Adlington: Lucy
    A Fortune Foretold
    A Googly In The Compound
    Alexander: V.S.
    A Million Drops
    Ashes To Ashes: The Chronicles Of Hugh De Singleton
    Bagirov: Togrul
    Beanland: Rachel
    Before We Visit The Goddess
    Bell: Anthea
    Captain Swing And The Blacksmith
    Cash: Wiley
    Charcoal Joe: An Easy Rawlins Mystery
    Cramer: Marina Antropow
    Death Of An Alchemist
    Defectors
    Del Árbol: Víctor
    Desai: Boman
    Divakaruni: Chitra Banerjee
    Florence Adler Swims Forever
    Godpretty In The Tobacco Field
    Great Game
    Heivoll: Gaute
    Ice Cold
    In The Lion's Den
    Joinson: Suzanne
    Kanen: Joseph
    Lawrence: Mary
    Lightningstruck
    Mace Havird: Ashely
    Make A Wish But Not For Money
    Morrell: David
    Mosley: Walter
    Nunnally: Tiina
    Olav Audunsson: Providence
    Overholt: Cuyler
    Parvin: Beatrice
    Pliejel: Agneta
    Richardson: Kim Michele
    Roads
    Ruler Of The Night
    Russell: Craig
    Schenkel: Andrea Maria
    Starr: Mel
    Strempek Shea: Suzanne
    Taylor Bradford: Barbara
    The
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    The Devil Aspect
    The Dressmakers Of Auschwitz
    The Girl They Left Behind
    The Last Ballad
    The Lost Girls
    The Photographer's Wife
    The Postmistress Of Paris
    The Sisters Of Glass Ferry
    The Taster
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    Velatzos: Roxanne
    Young: Heather



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                ~ Murga, Seer of Bury Down

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