The Devil's Dream

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Combining an unmistakable voice with an infallible sense of story . . . she writes lyric, luminous prose; her craft is so strong it becomes transparent, and, like the best of storytellers, she knows how to get out of the way so that story can tell itself.”

—
San Francisco Chronicle

 

“A heartbreaker . . . Judging fiddle music to be the voice of the Devil laughing, preacher's son Moses Bailey forbade his fiddle-loving wife, Kate Malone, the music she was raised on in the Virginia hills. She bore him three children, tending their lonesome cabin while Moses tramped the countryside searching in vain for God. But Kate's heritage proved too strong, and she soon began fiddling away for the children behind her husband's back. . . . This is the stuff of family legend, indeed the very soul of Lee Smith's beautifully told saga about a Southern singing family down through the ages. . . . Smith proves again in
The Devil's Dream
her keen ear for oral history as she pushes her extraordinary gift to new limits, switching deftly and imperceptibly from voice to voice to resounding voice.”

—
Boston Sunday Globe

 

“
The Devil's Dream
is a family quilt of a novel, stitched together from the patchwork fabric of several generations, each embroidered with its story in a distinctive, intensely personal style. Although it sweeps through 150 years and employs a variety of voices, the candor and warmth of the narrative encourage an intimacy with the characters. And the lure of music, whether simple hymns or Nashville rockabilly, is the thread that unites them all . . . Tragic, joyful, and touching.”

—
The Washington Post Book World

 

“You don't have to know country music to fall for Lee Smith's novel. . . . All you need to bring is a love of people, an ear that delights in the many flavors of language, and a decent sense of irony. Ms. Smith provides the rest, abundantly.”

—
The New York Times Book Review

 

“A storyteller carrying on the tradition of the Scottish and Irish pioneers who settled the Southern mountains, Ms. Smith allows her characters to speak for themselves, delivering long monologues in a conversational style and dialect appropriate to the times and place. . . . Her book begs to be read aloud. Down-home for sure, her characters nonetheless communicate to the reader with intimacy and honesty and hearts full to bursting.”

—
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 

“Smith has mined the culture of rural Appalachians to produce entertaining and satisfying stories. With
The Devil's Dream
, she marries meticulous research with her obvious affection for mountain music and mountain people. And, as in
Oral History
, she employs a number of narrators to create a book that often reads like a ballad. The voices, from that of a digressive old-timer remembering the girl of his dreams to a middle-aged woman taking a pragmatic view of her ex-daughter-in-law's antics, are distinctive and memorable.”

—
Orlando Sentinel

 

“Smith spins a down-home tale of weddings and adulteries, many offspring—legitimate and otherwise—and thunderous ‘signs from God' in every generation. Each chapter is the equivalent of a country song, combining the tragic, the hokey, the joyous, and the ironically inevitable. . . . Smith's strong, believable characters, their gossipy, matter-of-fact voices, and their affection for their rustic mountain home make this a rich, inviting multigenerational tale.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

 

“With this book, Smith again shows us that she's lyrical as any songbird and second only to Fred Chappell when it comes to capturing the mystic sweetness of the Appalachians. . . . She deserves kudos just for her rendering of lunatics, for no Southerner has ever penned them better. Except, maybe, Faulkner.”

—
Greensboro (NC) News & Record

 

“You'd have to have a hole in your pea-pickin' soul not to be enchanted by Lee Smith's fictional paean to the white man's blues,
The Devil's Dream
. . . . Throughout this sprawling family saga, Smith captures music-making at its purest and show biz at its most disingenuous, offering fascinating glimpses of old-time medicine shows, radio barn dances, sleazy rockabilly joints, primitive recording sessions, the Grand Ole Opry, crass country commercialism—even a phantom backwoods fiddler. . . . Pleasures of all sizes and emotional hues abound in
The Devil's Dream
and, country music fan or not, you won't want this ambitious and rewarding novel to end.”

—
The Cleveland Plain Dealer

 

“Simply marvelous . . . One of the best contemporary novels I have ever read . . . In between these stories blooms an intricate knot garden of other tales, vivid with sexual and romantic passion, darkened with religion fevers, and sweetened by a love of, and talent for, music. Each narrator steps forward out of the group to sing his or her special ‘song.' . . . In
The Devil's Dream
Lee Smith has written a classic, one that's fun to read.”

—
The Raleigh News & Observer

 

“If ever a subject found its perfect voice, it is surely in Lee Smith's new novel,
The Devil's Dream
. . . . Here are characters vividly animated by Smith's keen ear and rich imagination and whose lives assume a reality as solidly grounded as your next-door neighbor. . . . Lee Smith once again shows herself a storyteller of the first rank, and her characters in
The Devil's Dream
are among her most memorable.”

—
The Columbia (SC) State

 

“Thoroughly entertaining . . . Smith creates a vividly labyrinthine world of family ties in which music is always a part . . . a real treat.”

—
Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 1992 by Lee Smith.

 

All rights reserved.

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eISBN : 978-1-101-47888-2

 

Smith, Lee, date.

The devil's dream / Lee Smith.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-47888-2

I. Title.

PS3569.M5376D-1027 CIP

813'.54—dc20

 

 

This book is dedicated
to all the real country artists,
living and dead, whose music
I have loved for so long
.

The author is grateful to the Lyndhurst Foundation for its generous support during the writing of this novel; to North Carolina State University for giving me leave of absence; and to the Southern Folklife Collection of the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.