The Evolution of the Series (7) "Devilry"

In several of the stories, mention is made of an area in the eastern Ozarks called “The Irish Wilderness.” It’s an actual place close to where I live. It was an immigrant settlement started by a Catholic priest shortly before the Civil War. Largely due to the predation of the “bushwhackers,” it was abandoned and came to be known as “The Irish Wilderness.” Since the mayhem of those irregular Confederate and Union units occurred throughout the Missouri Ozarks (and didn’t stop with the end of the war), I decided to feature it in the seventh story, which is appropriately titled “Devilry.”

No, the bushwhackers and border ruffians don’t still run wild in the hills today. The Baldknobbers featured in Branson skits and alluded to in “The Shepherd of the Hills” are long gone. However, the lore still exists, as does suspicion and even hatred of the outsider, and “the other.” In fact, it exists everywhere to some extent. I think it’s an almost universal human trait. Shug Shively would expain it by saying that all of us are “positively inclined to evil.”

I set out to write Devilry with a single thought in mind: what a person is sure of is more important to him that what the truth is. And thereby tragedy often ensues, and evil is excused.

Brief vignettes from the war and post-war period are interspersed within the narrative. They are not there for decoration.

Devilry