The Devil's Dream

June 29, 1992
Smith's ( Fair and Tender Ladies ) novels always glow with the empathy she feels for her spirited Southern characters. Her latest, a rollicking hillbilly saga, traces the family of country music star Katie Cocker. In 1830s Grassy Branch, Tenn., the first Kate, member of a family known for their virtuosity on the fiddle, marries religion-obsessed Moses Bailey. Fiddle music, described by the fire-and-brimstone set as ``the voice of the Devil laughing,'' becomes her undoing, but her musical ability passes on. 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. Among the vivid characters are Nonnie Bailey, who leaves her husband and children to run off with a quack medicine charlatan; the Grassy Branch Girls, who record legendary folk songs with the Victor Talking Machine Company; and Blackjack Johnny Raines, a pill-popping rockabilly cat. The book's zesty humor abates slightly as it catches up with Katie's own sad story of how she lost love but found religion. Still, Smith's strong, believable characters, their gossipy, matter-of-fact voices and their affection for their rustic mountain home makes this a rich, inviting multigenerational tale. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates.

Some novels seem written with an authorial eye on Hollywood. Others, like this one, seem made for audio. Lee Smith's charming novel recounts the adventures and misadventures of one Appalachian family over six generations. Some of the kin are hellfire preachers, some besotted drunks; some strong, some weak; some abused, some abusers. But all of them are connected in significant ways to country music, first for pleasure, then for profit. And all have compelling stories. To tell these stories, eight narrators provide what is truly an audio tour de force. These performers seem "country" themselves, handling rural dialects, mountain expressions, and, most impressively, Grand Ole Opry-type singing with consummate skill. Linda Stephens, the principal narrator, excels, but she has ample support, most memorably from Mark Hammer. A-plus for this fine novel and even finer recording, one you don't want to miss. T.H. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine