I found “Kentucky Clay”, by Katherine Bateman, to be a difficult book to properly categorize. There are far too many passages and sections where the author imagines or visualizes things in her mind to call this a history. For a similar reason, it doesn’t work as a biography of the Clay family. If she were to include this as a section discussing how her ancestors’ history affected her life, then it could work as part of her memoirs, but there isn’t enough about her own life in this book to call it that either. As a result, I suspect that there is rather a limited audience who would get much value out of this work.

That being said, there are some good things about the book. The writing style is easy to follow, and she does a good job of describing the sights, sounds, etc., of the events she is discussing. In addition, there are quite a few interesting stories which are enjoyable, though not the most complimentary to many members of her family. Lastly, the organization of the bibliography was excellent as it clearly lists sources for each aspect of what she discusses in the book.

At the end, though, the reader is left wondering what to do with what they have read. Repeatedly she refers to her own ideas and imagination in her discussion of events and how she thinks things happened. She uses as sources the family stories which were passed down to her, from the same sources which she shows are unreliable when she chooses to deviate from their narrative. So what the reader really ends up with is Katherine Bateman’s version of handing down the family stories. She has added a few new ones, and changed a few of the older ones, and she has allowed those of us who are not in the family a chance to hear them. But when all is said and done, the reader is simply a fly on the wall as Katherine tells the family stories to the next generation of her family.

I don’t think people will hate this book, and it certainly would give you something to do on a lazy afternoon. However, I don’t think it delivers much more than that.