with master and slave riding and driv¬
ing lead wagons. The general pano¬
rama of over 200 years unfolds as
the nation grows into its present condi¬
tion in throes of war and peace, de¬
pression and prosperity.
Miss Medley is an accomplished
writer in a variety of literary arenas,
and the present work maintains her
high standards. The style is perfect for
a work of history, a masterful blend of
the serenely old-fashioned and the
terse avant-garde. There are passages
of poetic prose, high humor, and inten¬
sive detail. The depth of the author’s
research into social life and custom
gives the book a proper flavor of the
olden days it describes so well.
The Civil War section of the book is
particularly impressive, full as it is of
fascinating minutiae along with more
important matters. I was enthralled by
the author’s description of the debate
which raged before the war in Anson
County on the subject of secession,
culminating in an affray over a hand¬
made Confederate flag which was
hoisted prominently by one faction and
tom down by another.
Other particularly good sections of
the book are those on the War of the
Regulation, the Revolutionary War.
the founding of the early community of
Sneedsborough, early churches, and
the final two chapters on community
histories and noted personalities.
The most impressive research for
the book concerned the founding of
Sneedsborough. and a corollary story
of love and dark tragedy which
spanned two continents and which
George Washington called the saddest
story of the American Revolutionary
period.
Miss Medley does not hesitate to
debunk myth: for example, she
suceeds in demolishing the legend that
the great Jenny I.ind once sang in the
White Store Community, and several
times she calls early historians to task
for their errors.
Black citizens of Anson County, and
their contributions, are noted promi¬
nently and frequently.
The Anson County Historical Soci¬
ety is publishing the book under a roy¬
alty contract with the author. Persons
interested in obtaining copies should
order them from J. A. Hardison. Jr.,
treasurer of the society. P.O. Box III.
Wadesboro. N.C. 28170. making
checks payable to Anson County His¬
torical Society. North Carolina resi¬
dents should add 50 cents tax before
Sept. 15. and 60 cents tax thereafter. —
Clark Cox
John Foster West
— a Mountain Man
By VICTOR DALMAS
They call him “Mountain Man” but
he could pass for a British Army
Brigadier. And. in fact, novelist John
Foster West's ancestry does reach
back into English history. His great,
great, great grandfather. Alexander
West, was English and settled in
Wilkes County. North Carolina, on the
Yadkin River about 1770. From that
day until now. this branch of the West
family has lived in the Appalachians of
the state. His mother’s side of the fam¬
ily was English and German. They,
too. settled in Wilkes County (on the
Reddis River near Wilkesboro) and the
original broadax-hewn log cabin, built
in the 1770’sby Steven Baumgamer. is
still standing. With such a background,
who could better write about the North
Carolina mountains and its people?
West’s powerful first novel. Time
Was < 1965). begins before the nar¬
rator's birth with the disguised lives of
West's father (Will Ward) and his
father's first wife, the courtship of the
narrator’s mother (Alvira Matlock) by
his father, their marriage and difficult
life in the hills, to the conceiving of the
storyteller (John Ward) himself. The
work is written dramatically with each
episode in the lives of the Wards por¬
trayed so realistically and with such
suspense that it is not easy to pul
down. Bennett Cerf. who was head of
Random House at the lime it published
the book, w rote West of his pleasure in
reading it. It was widely reviewed na¬
tionally and was a critical success.
This was the first book the novelist had
published, but it by no means \vas the
first book he had written.
When John Foster was still at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill after World War II. where he was
known as a writer and helped found the
Carolina Quarterly, he was runner-up
for the Dodd. Mead Intercollegiate
Fellowship for novels. He continued to
write novels and finished seven (all
unpublished) before he began Time
Was. "I’d always wanted to write this
story but I could never gel the proper
perspective while my mother was liv¬
ing. Shortly after her death on Feb¬
ruary 2. 1%2. I began. I was driven to
write it." West says.
His second novel. Appalachian
Dawn, a sequel to Time Was. was
brought out by Moore Publishers of
Durham in 1973. It is the story, in
episodic form, of the fictional boyhood
of John Ward (conceived at the end of
Time Was) to age thirteen and it is
fondly reminiscent of all such stories
from the height and perceptions of a
child looking at life through natural
catastrophes, the actions of his
brothers and sisters and parents, the
bullying or friendship of his young ac¬
quaintances — that is. the initiation
into life itself however enjoyable,
brutal or uncompromising. And
though the family lived in abject pov¬
erty (the father grew corn in the barren
clay of the region and hauled lumber
and tanbark by mules and wagon to
W'ilkesboro for a pittance), this didn't
bother the boy. for he was used to
nothing else. In both of West’s novels,
nevertheless, the reader feels a
foreboding sense of being hemmed-in
by the restrictions of the surrounding
hills and by the gnaw ing despair of the
people at not being able to control their
destinies or better their lives.
John Foster was a sensitive child
and wanted to read all he could get his
hands on from the time he was four.
His first poetry was written at eight.
His first published poem was in a
Lenoir newspaper when he was in the
22
THE state. August 1976
