Saturday Review: “Long Roads and Tall Pines” a review by Rebecca Duncan in NCLR Online Winter 2024.
Marjorie Hudson. Indigo Field. (2023)
Susan O’Dell Underwood. Genesis Road. (2022)
We’re sharing some new book reviews from our forthcoming Winter issue. Here, Rebecca Duncan reviews Marjorie Hudson and Susan O’Dell Underwood.
Hudson’s book Indigo Field was awarded this year’s Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction from NC Literary & Historical Society. We’re not surprised, of course: she’s been writing for NCLR for years, going back to our very first issue with her piece on John Lawson’s Trek across the Carolinas.
Duncan writes, “Hudson blends fictional narrative and North Carolina history with just the right touch to make the story plausible. The focal point of both fact and fiction is the the physical land.” Hudson pulls on her years of experience both researching and writing about the Tuscarora to infuse the novel with historical accuracy. Duncan remarks, “it doesn’t hurt that North Carolina readers might at some point begin to believe they have met at least one of these folks down at the Country Farm and Home store on a
recent Saturday morning.”
Underwood, too, has been published in NCLR before, as an 2017 Albright Award finalist. About the novel, Duncan says, “Underwood blends lyrical descriptions, lively interactions, incisive metaphors, and a few camping and weather-related crises to keep readers engaged and hopeful and to draw Glenna as believable and complex and ready to decide about the land that has long defined her.”
Congratulations to Marjorie Hudson, who will receive the Sir Walter Raleigh Award Friday, December 8, at 1:00, in the auditorium of the Archives & History/State Library Bldg. in Raleigh. Find more information and a link to stream the event here.
Read the entire review and buy the books from your local independent bookstore.
