by Zilla Novikov

“This hell on earth killed the women and broke the men.”

Hillbilly Grit by Marynell Autry opens with violence and transitions to acceptance. Recovery, for those who can recover. Life goes on because that’s what life does. It clenches its teeth, steels its nerve, and milks the cows or sews a new shirt or goes back to its husband and has another child or leaves him and marries someone new and has another child. Life is cruel and relentless and somehow it is survivable. And there will be new life.

Some of the characters in Hillbilly Grit are kind and giving, and some are thoughtless and selfish, but, no matter where they move to or what job they take, the pattern finds them. Violence and childbirth. “The heart wants comfort, closeness, a sense of belonging.” The heart gets what it wants, sometimes, for a while.

I was so lost in the story that it came as a shock to me when Sally mentioned a truck. A sudden jolt to remind me that time passed, persisted, that patterns repeat but people change and the world moves on. How many years had I been reading about this family, to go from horse and buggy to Model T farm truck?

The characters who stayed with me most are the ones who tried to escape the pattern. Annie. Ivor. They can’t, anyone could have told them that, but they tried.