{"id":3520,"date":"2020-01-10T07:28:25","date_gmt":"2020-01-10T15:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3520"},"modified":"2020-01-10T07:28:25","modified_gmt":"2020-01-10T15:28:25","slug":"jess-montgomery-the-hollows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/jess-montgomery-the-hollows\/","title":{"rendered":"Jess Montgomery: The Hollows"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The second novel in Jess Montgomery\u2019s remarkable series set in a 1920\u2019s Ohio mining town is every bit as memorable and vivid as the first, The Widows,<\/em> which was far and away one of the best books of 2019.\u00a0 Montgomery brings to life the story of the first female sheriff, Lily Ross, in tiny Kinship, Ohio.\u00a0 While the first novel concerned itself with the politics of mining, this novel is more of a straight mystery, which veers into the unfortunate territory of racism and because of the time period, an ever present and ingrained sexism. This is naturally a hindrance at times to Lily\u2019s carrying out her duties.<\/p>\n

The book opens with the wandering of an old woman down some railroad tracks, where she ultimately falls to her death.\u00a0 As Lily is called in to investigate, she of course wonders if the frail, shoeless old woman fell, or was pushed.\u00a0 One of the strengths of both novels are the network of kin (her town is even called \u201cKinship\u201d) \u00a0and friends that Lily calls on and relies on to both help her get through the day taking care of her children \u2013 that\u2019s often her mother, raising her own late on life child \u2013 to taking care of prisoners at the jail, to figuring out the deep connections in the backwoods hollows that to any outsider would be impenetrable.<\/p>\n

Hildy, Lily\u2019s friend since childhood, is the one Lily calls on to help with tasks at the jail.\u00a0 Lily is somewhat dismissive of Hildy, thinking her soft and simply awaiting marriage to the staid Merle, owner of the town grocery store.\u00a0 Then there\u2019s Marvena, encountered in the first novel, union worker, still owner, and force of nature.\u00a0 What Marvena doesn\u2019t know about the backwoods isn\u2019t worth talking about.\u00a0 She\u2019s also Lily\u2019s source for tracking dogs, so the two of them set out to track the dead woman\u2019s path.<\/p>\n

The path takes them to the doors of the mental asylum, The Hollows of the title, where Lily discovers that the woman suffered from dementia.\u00a0 She ultimately discovers family ties the woman had to the town. \u00a0Deep and terrible events bound the woman to Kinship, and as Lily peels back layers, exhausted and helped by Marvena, she also uncovers a women\u2019s branch of the KKK, known as the WKKK.\u00a0 This was sadly a real organization.<\/p>\n

Montgomery does not shy from politics, and she includes the unfortunate history of this awful racist organization, as well as the work the Quakers did on the underground railroad.\u00a0 As in all things, it\u2019s a crazy balancing act, with extremes existing at the same time and in the same place, often with no common ground.<\/p>\n

Montgomery also has a hand with prose.\u00a0 Her writing is lovely, and she truly illuminates the Ohio valleys she\u2019s describing, as much as she illuminates the inner lives of her characters.\u00a0 This novel mainly belongs to Lily and Hildy, another illustration of a relationship out of balance throughout much of the novel.\u00a0 Montgomery\u2019s love for her characters, for the land she\u2019s writing about, and for the time period she\u2019s chosen, shines through on every page.<\/p>\n

If she has a direct ancestress I would say it would be Sharyn McCrumb.\u00a0 Sharyn McCrumb\u2019s Appalachia is in a slightly different location, but McCrumb and Montgomery share a reverence for folk culture and even the possibility of an unexplained spirit or two.\u00a0 My best advice: dive into these wonderful novels.\u00a0 It\u2019s an immersive and beautiful experience.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The second novel in Jess Montgomery\u2019s remarkable series set in a 1920\u2019s Ohio mining town is every bit as memorable and vivid as the first, The Widows, which was far and away one of the best books of 2019.\u00a0 Montgomery brings to life the story of the first female sheriff, Lily Ross, in tiny Kinship, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[289,10,267,100,211,288],"class_list":["post-3520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1920s-ohio","tag-historical","tag-jess-montgomery","tag-minotaur-books","tag-sharyn-mccrumb","tag-the-hollows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3521,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3520\/revisions\/3521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}