Nowhere Else on Earth

asked by 78704 on November 2, 2006 1:41 PM

Although not a single cannon is fired in Josephine Humphreys's quietly ambitious Nowhere Else on Earth, the lives of the inhabitants of Scuffletown, a poor Indian settlement on the Lumbee River in North Carolina, are in every way affected by the Civil War. The demand for turpentine, their principal industry, has dwindled to nothing. When they are not fending off or involuntarily "supplying" Union soldiers and marauding gangs, they are hiding their sons from the macks, their hostile Confederate neighbors (pink-faced Scottish farmers with names like McTeer and McLean), who are rounding up Scuffletown boys for forced labor in forts and salt works, from which few have returned.

Sixteen-year-old Rhoda Strong has seen both her brothers disappear into the woods to join this gang, headed by the handsome, charismatic Henry Berry Lowrie, the hope of Scuffletown--who keeps the young men alive through a series of crimes that inevitably escalate to match the cruelties of the macks. To her mother's distress, and to her own, Rhoda finds herself falling in love with Henry Lowrie, so obviously a marked man. When he notices her, and returns her love, she too becomes marked, dubbed the Queen of Scuffletown by her enemies and drawn into a larger history of suffering and revenge.

Writing from the vantage point of middle age, Rhoda resurrects the past, "hot as coals," in an obsessive act of remembrance, having studied and pondered her story for over 20 years. One dog tooth is gone, and my monthly flow has dwindled to a spatter. I'm not as full as I used to be, my wrists are skinny, my knuckles are knobs. I'm starting to wear thin. This is the price of the years of thinking, the casting and recording of events and the frantic pen scratching past midnight, the hoarding of paper, the loneliness, the pages accumulating while I myself shrink down. Rhoda's richly detailed and beautifully sustained fourth novel will recall, in the best ways, Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain (also set in North Carolina, the most "Union" of the Confederate states), although Humphreys has given her heroine a fresh, strong voice, and in turn given a voice to Scuffletown. --Regina Marler

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Reviews

In somewhat of an anomaly for Humphreys, this work of historical fiction is set in North Carolina in 1864, where the Lumbee Indians (descendants perhaps of Raleigh's "Lost Colony") are being harassed by Southerners to help build Fort Fisher. A local band known as the Lowrie Gang rebels; in addition, there's a love interest between Lowrie and Rhoda Strong, an Indian, who foresakes Lowrie for her people. I felt Humphreys's strenghths as a writer, especially her strong characterizations, were weakly displayed here; historical fiction does not seem to be her forte. Much better are her contemporary novels.

reviewed by wendi on November 17, 2006 8:23 PM

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I was eagar to read this book after living amoung the Lumbee Indians for ten years (and marrying one). This book is wonderfully written and carefully researched. I found it to be so true to the way the " Old Timers" in Robeson County tell the tales of Henry Berry Lowrie and his gang. The discriptions of the area and the feelings of the Lumbee come through loud and clear as Humphreys tells the tale through the eyes of Rhoda Strong Lowrie.

reviewed by jerseymike on November 18, 2006 8:10 AM

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"Under the swamps and barrens of Robeson County there is no bedrock, and in Drowning Creek no stones." Yet every few years the earth brings forth seemingly from nowhere a strange stone large enough to be prized as a grave marker. So Josephine Humphreys tells us in the voice of the narrator of Nowhere Else on Earth. The earth gives birth to stones, and history brings forth legends. One with considerable basis in fact is that of Henry Berry Lowrie, the hero of the novel. Lowrie was a latter-day Robin Hood, a man who did much to rebalance the scales of justice in favor of the marginalized in the lawless aftermath of the Civil War. Humphreys tells his story and in the process sheds light on a period, place, and people neglected in mainstream historical accounts, overlooked perhaps because the people involved are too solidly centered in themselves to make much of a fuss. But adding Henry Berry Lowrie to the list of heroes school children know as well as they know Daniel Boone would do much to enrich the story of America.

reviewed by linda on November 19, 2006 4:14 PM

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Excellent work of historical fiction. A very enjoyable book to read. I grew up in Pembroke and really enjoyed reading about Henry Lowrie during the civil war period. I heard the story as a young boy from my father and was very happy to read a more detailed and accurate account. Everyone with any interest in the history of Eastern North Carolina should read this book to better understand the Pembroke area..

reviewed by perfectjen on November 28, 2006 3:12 AM

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add a new book!