Gap Creek by Robert Morgan, A Book Review by Rebecca Moll

Some books you forget as quickly as you finish, their characters melting into the backdrop of information absorbed throughout life. Others, like Gap Creek, stick with you, like mud to your shoe, the characters clinging to your thoughts, if not for their vitality, persistence, and tenacity, then for the mountains of adversity they not only forged but climbed, and climbed, and climbed.

“When you have to climb, there’s nothing to do, but pitch into it. The only way to climb is slow and steady, to not wear yourself out at the beginning.” ~Julie, Gap Creek

Perseverance. Steadfast. Fortitude. Patience. Grit. Grim. A boot straps kind of trust. A Jack-in-the-pulpit kind of hope. Qualities that only the edges of life can engrain.

Set in the Carolina’s during the last years of the 19thc, an era that brought than enough hardship in just meeting the day, Julie more than meets her fair share. Newly married, far from home, Julie sets her mark upon a world that could just as easily defeat her. Meeting challenges head-on, she works as hard as any man, and more so, as hard as her husband, Hank. Chronicling their first year of marriage, Julie tells all, the tragedies, their resourcefulness, despair, loss, and glory. And in doing so, comes full-circle with life’s lesson that she is not the only one who needs to carry the load, that sometimes the only way to save someone is to allow yourself to be needed. One must be needed to be strong. And it wasn’t just Hank that Julie needed. Pride aside, Julie finds a place for her faith.

Throughout the book I was reminded of time and how different things are today. Back then, letters were posted, weeks, sometimes months before a reply arrived, if at all. Going to work was a two hour walk each way. Dinner took all day to prepare, as did laundry, livestock, and farming. Birthing babies was no different, arriving on no one’s time but their own. Seasonal chores garnered all resources, slaughtering pigs, rendering fat, planting, cultivating, and reaping crops. Canning, salting, and drying. Lives revolved around sunup and sundown, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Time. Time. And more time.

And just like climbing, the only way is slow and steady, not to wear yourself out at the beginning.

Two generations descended from such hardworking, God-fearing, self-reliant forefathers; I can put face to fact in what such a life may have been. Grandma and Grandpa Sawyers, the old home, the pantry floor-to-ceiling with canned goods, the big barn, fields, a rambling creek, the mountain out the kitchen window. And although I see a simplicity, even beauty, in living off the land without recourse and the strength of character and faith it requires, I meter this with a good dose of reality. Life is pretty darn good in today in the good old USA.

Regardless of time, life is a mountain.

If you like stories that transport you back in time, lend authenticity and reality to a bygone era, characters that speak the truth, then Gap Creek is a good pick for you. Strap on your trusty boots, tuck tight your Jack-in-the-pulpit kind of hope and get ready to climb. No worries, you’ve got plenty of time. Let Julie do the talking and you’ll be just fine.