This Rock

August 27, 2001
Morgan follows up his bestselling Gap Creek
with another tale of the Carolina wilderness in the 1920s. Muir Powell is three years younger than his brother, Moody, but the two are light years apart in temperament and attitude. Muir is his widowed mother Ginny's clear favorite, a position he earns by being unselfishly supportive of the family's needs. A callow youth who dreams of building, he tries his hand at preaching, trapping and a variety of other occupations, only to fail miserably and return home in frustrated disgrace every time. Moody, who's wild and undisciplined, hardly works at all and spends his time in the company of bootleggers and prostitutes. Jealous of Muir's favored position in the household, he derides his younger brother's efforts to find his way and support the family. Told in a gentle, flowing prose that shifts unevenly between Muir's and Ginny's points of view, the novel maps out life in a remote, tradition-bound region. Underscoring all is the family's fundamentalist religion and their devotion to old-fashioned family values. Muir's capricious decision to build a church on the family land forces matters to a crisis that tests the family's faith and commitment to one another, and in the final chapters, Muir's discovery of his true calling sustains and validates their belief in the strength of love and the ties that bind. Although the novel suffers from overdetailing, episodic pacing and seemingly pointless anecdotal tangents that leave many loose ends dangling in the mountain breeze, it's an entirely pleasant read and a testimony to the power of faith and integrity in the face of life's severest hardships. (Sept. 28)Forecast:It's unlikely that sales of Morgan's latest will match
Gap Creek totals—
Gap Creek was an Oprah selection and an international bestseller—but
This Rock is in much the same vein, so new and old fans should be satisfied.

April 1, 2002
Adult/High School-Seventeen-year-old Muir tries hard to respond to his inner faith while avoiding the outward rancor and jealousy of his older brother, Moody. Set in Appalachia during Prohibition, this Cain-and-Abel-themed story comes to readers through the viewpoints of Muir and his mother. The mountain community is poor in all things but religion, and even that is parceled out with a certain meanness, with the boys' mother excluded from the local church in spite of her family's gift of land on which it was built. Muir, who believes that he is called to the ministry, is unable to see any of the elaborate projects he undertakes through to the end. Yet devotion to his mother, pride in the work he knows his hands can do, and the desire to be admirable in Moody's eyes inform his dream to build his own house of worship. When Moody's moonshine adventures ensnare him, Muir becomes overwhelmed by his moral life and tries to leave home. Several attempts to become independent of the familial or geographic landscapes of his youth prove doomed. Yet, he outlives Moody, officiating at his brother's funeral in his first independent clerical act. This historical novel will please both students and teachers looking for supplemental fiction when introducing 20th-century Southern gothics.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA

Copyright 2002 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2001
Morgan here continues the story of the Powell family, begun in The Truest Pleasure (LJ 8/95) and continuing with the best-selling Gap Creek (LJ 9/1/99), an Oprah selection. Some 20 years after the events in Gap Creek, Muir and his ornery older brother, Moody, struggle with each other; with their widowed mother, Ginny; and with the rural Southern community where they live. Muir, not yet 20, is on a quest to find his life's work: does he have a true calling as a preacher? Ultimately, through the catalysts of two seemingly unrelated deaths, he conceives of a project that in turn reveals his life's true purpose. Though Morgan still pursues his favorite theme, the redeeming power of work, his new book is both more ambitious and more uneven than Gap Creek. Not a lightweight Bildungsroman, this novel instead illuminates the painful movement from boy to man. As such, it might not satisfy earlier Morgan readers, but libraries will definitely want this. Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2001
Author of the best-selling " Gap Creek" (1999, an Oprah Book Club selection), Morgan offers another gritty tale of life in the rural South, this one set during the years 1921-23. Muir and Moody Powell are locked in a bitter, protracted sibling rivalry. Teenage Muir is ambitious, hardworking, and deeply religious, but he's also frustrated by his own lack of direction. The older Moody, embittered by his father's death and his mother's favoritism of Muir, has taken up with a group of hardbitten moonshiners. When Moody involves Muir in a dangerous liquor run, trying to evade the local sheriff in their Model T on treacherous backroads, Muir decides that it is time to strike out on his own. Thus ensues a disastrous foray into North Carolina; after nearly drowning in the Tar River, Muir returns home and discovers his calling--preaching--while Moody sinks further into trouble with his heavy drinking and gambling. Morgan delivers a surprisingly compelling narrative, with Muir's flawed adventures providing the momentum. In addition, he writes convincingly about the hard work of running a farm and living and trapping in the wild. Morgan writes very simply about hard times and deep faith, and this story will resound with modern readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)