“Living On Shifting Ground”: Miller reviews Turner-Yamamoto

Saturday Review: “Living on Shifting Ground” a review by Monica Carol Miller of Judith Turner-Yamamoto’s novel Loving the Dead and Gone in the upcoming NCLR 2023 Winter Online issue

In the next review from our upcoming 2023 Winter online issue, Monica Carol Miller reviews Judith Turner-Yamamoto‘s debut novel Loving The Dead and Gone.

Turner-Yamamoto is an award-winning writer and she combines her talent with words with her rural NC upbringing to create this book. Miller posits that the “connections emphasize the Faulknerian theme of Southern literature that the past is never fully gone. As past decisions and tragedies continue to reverberate, the very landscape contains a history of trauma.”

The landscape provides much emphasis in the story. North Carolinians know how important a garden can be to a homestead, to a family. Miller comments on Turner-Yamamoto’s use of natural imagery: “In Aurilla’s life – and in the lives of many of these characters – nature reflects the emotional life of the people who live there, the history of the region, and even the brevity of life.”