Celebrating the Complexities and Joys of Family Life in A Parchment of Leaves

Silas House grew up in a family of storytellers. The most gifted among them was Dave Sizemore, his great-uncle. Sizemore died in 1997, and with his death, House suddenly realized that a rich and wonderful history had gone with him.

That's when House, who had had writing aspirations since childhood, finally decided to seriously pursue his own brand of storytelling.

"The written word became more important," he said in a recent phone interview from Louisville, Kentucky, where he had just launched a 25-city tour. "Stories have to be preserved, passed on. We're defined by stories."

And, so, House began to write Clay's Quilt (Algonquin hardcover, Ballantine paper), a debut novel that would fast earn kudos as well as significant bookseller support, and would become a Book Sense 76 pick, a Southeast Booksellers Association fiction award finalist, and a bestseller in his home state of Kentucky.

House wove some of Sizemore's stories into the novel, an act of preservation that also yielded some literary gems. "I have many of his stories in my work. For example, in Clay, there is a story he always told about riding a horse into the house while the women of the family were preparing Christmas dinner."

In his second novel, A Parchment of Leaves (Algonquin), House returns to his preferred subject -- the complexities and joys of family life -- and again reclaims, and preserves, a part of his family history.

His main character, Vine, is based on his great-grandmother Martha, a full-blooded Cherokee whose family spurned native culture to assimilate better. Most of the information about the House family's Cherokee heritage is lost, a filtering process that began with Martha's father.

"Martha was raised to be Americanized because her father had been prejudiced against and never wanted that to happen to his children," House said.

The decision to turn away from Native culture was, in House's family -- as well as in the fictional family he creates in A Parchment of Leaves -- a point of contention. In the novel, Vine's mother tries to integrate Cherokee rituals and values into her children's lives without ever overtly defying their father. But, in the end, Vine knows little of Cherokee tradition and culture. This loss of heritage, identity, and history, what he calls the "homogenization of America," is something House mourns.

"We're losing so many aspects of our individuality. [What happened to Martha] is a perfect example of that, and it's a really sad thing," House said.

House completed extensive research about Cherokee life that never made it into in the book. What did translate, though, was less factual than tonal, and was inspired by Martha herself, who left behind a powerful testament -- her diary. The pages reflect the day-to-day life of a Cherokee woman fully assimilated to American rituals and mores.

The diary pages are yellowed and brittle; Martha's entries are written in pencil.

"It really affected me, " House said, speaking of the diary's fragility. "I know how easy it is lose things."

Martha didn't talk about herself in her diary, but, he said, "There are occasional little insights, little poems." But, mostly, Martha wrote about family, in particular recording deaths and how people had died. Her emphasis on others, the absence of focus on herself, sparked House's imagination as much -- perhaps more -- than the loss of culture Martha had experienced.

A Parchment of Leaves is set in the early 1900s, in the same Kentucky hills that House's first novel so beautifully evoked. The novel is Vine's, though it also tells the story of the larger family and community, especially the sea changes in culture produced by the introduction of the automobile and, also, by World War I. Vine marries into a white family and moves away from her community to live amidst her husband, Saul's. Her brother-in-law can't hide his passion for her, and the danger he poses, the threat Vine constantly feels, creates a tension that haunts the entire narrative.

For House, writing from a woman's point of view was initially not at all easy.

"I started out really thinking a lot about it. I was raised by a lot of strong women. And I began to write [the novel] as a tribute to those women. But the main thing was to write about Vine as a human being, not to get bogged down in gender," he said.

Writing the book was a journey of discovery. He didn't realize at first that, ultimately, this is a story about kindness and forgiveness. "I learned so much about my own people, and my own humanity. I always say this book is a gift to me," he explained.

Like Clay's Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves is swiftly claiming the attention of the book world. It received a starred review from Kirkus and is the number-eight selection on the November/December Book Sense 76 list. Algonquin is already into its second printing.

Said House, "I don't know where I'd be without the independent booksellers. Librarians and booksellers are my favorite people."

His book tour is scheduled to take him throughout the East and South. It started at Hawley-Cooke in Louisville. There, 300 people attended the reading, and the audience included two banjo players, whom House had asked to come along. "They played most of the songs mentioned in the book, and I even sung one of the songs, 'Charlie's Neat.' Most of those songs are things I've been hearing as long as I can remember; those songs are part of my soul."

Music is integral to House's fiction. In Clay's Quilt, he relied on fiddle music to serve as a metaphor. House believes the fiddle best expresses sadness and joy, and, therefore, perfectly reflected Clay's struggle between his abiding grief and his being content.

For A Parchment of Leaves, House chose the banjo as his signifying instrument. It can be rollicking and also menacing, a dichotomy that defined a key character.

House makes a tape as he writes each book, recording the music that has helped shape his characters and his prose. His next compilation should be lively. His third novel, now in progress, is set during the '50s and '60s. It's a prequel to Clay's Quilt.

"I'm having a whole lot of fun," he said.

House believes that integrating music into a story is the "best way to show joy," something he doesn't see in a lot of Southern fiction. "I always want joy in my books," he concluded. -- Caitlin Hamilton