HIDING EZRA review-

I'm really pleased with this published review in the ETSU Center for Appalachian Studies and Services magazine, NOW & THEN, by former English department chair Dr. Judith Slagle.

HIDING EZRA-Based on a True Story
Rita Quillen
Johnson City, TN: Little Creek Books, 2014
$12.95 (paperback), 220 pages
Poet Rita Quillen’s foray into the genre of long
fiction with Hiding Ezra offers readers an adventure,
a mystery, a history, a love story, a tragedy, and a
tale of redemption. Set near Quillen’s family home
in the hills of Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee
during World War I, Hiding Ezra is based on a true
story about a soldier who leaves Camp Lee to visit
his dying mother. When she convinces him to stay
with her beyond his leave, he becomes AWOL and
is soon labeled a deserter by the U. S. Army. After
Ezra Teague watches his mother’s funeral from the
woods, he must take to a life on the run, although
never far from Gate City and surrounding areas such
as Clinch Mountain, Hale Springs, and Knoxville.
Staying close to his sister Eva and the love of his
life, Alma, Ezra communicates with these women
through notes left in strategic places. He sometimes
leaves his sister firewood in the winter as she leaves
food for him. The harsh conditions of living alone in
an unsympathetic landscape in winter are intensified
through Ezra’s journal entries—at times funny,
poignant, and philosophical. Ezra ponders the Bible,
tries his hand at map-making, collects ginseng, reads
old newspapers, and muses over the absurdity of
outlawing liquor—all this to keep his sanity in the
woods. As Ezra’s story is told through multiple
perspectives, the accounts are pieced together like
the quilts that become a principal theme in the novel.
The second part of the novel, Ezra’s second
year on the run (beginning October 1919), adds
a dangerous human element to the peril already
present in the environment when the Army sends Lt.
Nettles to round up deserters—some of whom will
clearly be hanged. As fear and hunger set in, Ezra’s
mental and physical health deteriorates. Finding
shelter in Mrs. Osborne’s barn saves his life, and it is
obvious that people in the community feel a duty to
one another. But it is also clear how tough the women
characters are, for it is Eva and Alma who ultimately
bring about a solution to Ezra’s predicament as they
realize their physical and emotional potential in
scenes that are both earthy and sexy.
Hiding Ezra is the product of Quillen’s rich
heritage. While the journal entries she writes for
Ezra are, in fact, fictional, such a journal did exist
in her family. These journal entries bare Ezra’s soul
to the reader, and Quillen’s lyrical voice peppers
the narrative with sensory images. On his route to
catch Teague, Lt. Nettles finds himself standing
in a cemetery and realizes “that what he had first
thought were rocks were actually old headstones
with only illegible ghosts of words still visible.”
There are symbols of death throughout the novel,
but a significant symbol is also quilts and quilting,
prevalent as both a means of financial support
and physical comfort—emblematic of piecing
together individual lives and families. As this novel
concludes, Quillen braids contradictory spiritual
images when Ezra “baptizes” his baby daughter
Katie in the river, saying, “I baptize you in the name
of caves, the waterfall, these hills, the stones and
the stars.” This is the perfect culmination to a novel
fraught with contradictions about duty, religion, and
relationships.
v
Judith Bailey Slagle is Professor of English and Chair of Literature
and Language at East Tennessee State University.