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Gap Creek
Gap Creek
Author: Robert Morgan
There is a most unusual woman living in Gap Creek. Julie Harmon works hard, "hard as a man," they say, so hard that at times she's not sure she can stop. People depend on her to slaughter the hogs and nurse the dying. People are weak, and there is so much to do. She is just a teenager when her little brother dies in her arms. That same year she ...  more »
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ISBN-13: 9781565122963
ISBN-10: 1565122968
Publication Date: 1/18/2000
Pages: 324
Rating:
  • Currently 3.6/5 Stars.
 174

3.6 stars, based on 174 ratings
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback, Audio Cassette, Audio CD
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed Gap Creek on + 54 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
One Of my Favorite Books .. I think you have to be a True Southerner to Understand How Good this Book is ..
wesjones avatar reviewed Gap Creek on + 17 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
A beautiful story about Appalachia and the strong mountain women who live there. They prevail in the face of natural disaster, life's tragedies, and cultural difficulties. Julie Harmon exhibits strength and grace as she embarks on her first year of marriage.
vallipow avatar reviewed Gap Creek on + 40 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
I loved this lyrical novel about a memorable young woman as she and her new husband start their married life in a small Appalachian community at the tail end of the 19th Century.

Julie Richards is physically and spiritually strong, hard-working and loving, and completely without pretensions or self-pity as she moves from her parents' rural mountain cabin and into Mr Pendergast's small farm in even more remote Gap Creek with her new husband, Hank. During the year Hank and Julie steadfastly care for the farm and each other, Julie describes the privations they face and the gifts they receive from Nature and neighbors.

This book felt so real, as if Morgan was writing about someone in his own family -- perhaps his grandmother or great-grandmother. I highly recommend it and will remember it, and Julie, for a long time
reviewed Gap Creek on + 136 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
In other reviews I've read, people loved this book. I hate to be the devil's advocate, but I did not like it very much. I found that it dragged and I hit a point where I just wanted it to end. Yes, her life was tough and she faced many challenges. It may have been the writing. Or, it may have just been me.
reviewed Gap Creek on + 129 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
I did not like this book so much. I got it because I loved most of the Oprah's book club selections. But this one was not so great. It took a great effort for me to finish reading it.
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reviewed Gap Creek on + 18 more book reviews
Enjoyed this very much & learned a lot of details about difficult farm work.
reviewed Gap Creek on + 8 more book reviews
Oprah Book Club® Selection, January 2000:
Summary/Editorial Review:

Robert Morgan's Gap Creek opens with one wrenching death and ends with another. In between, this novel of turn-of-the-century Appalachian life works in fire, flood, swindlers, sickness, and starvation--a truly biblical assortment of plagues, all visited on the sturdy shoulders of 17-year-old Julie Harmon. "Human life don't mean a thing in this world," she concludes. And who could blame her? "People could be born and they could suffer, and they could die, and it didn't mean a thing.... The world was exactly like it had been and would always be, going on about its business." For Julie, that business is hard physical labor. Fortunately, she's fully capable of working "like a man"--splitting and hauling wood, butchering hogs, rendering lard, planting crops, and taking care of the stock. Even when Julie meets and marries handsome young Hank Richards, there's no happily-ever-after in store. Nothing comes easy in Julie Harmon's world, and their first year together is no exception.
Throughout the novel, Morgan chronicles Julie's trials in prose of great dignity and clarity, capturing the rhythms of North Carolina speech by using only the subtlest of inflections. Clearly the author has done his research too--the descriptions of physical labor practically leap off the page. (Suffice to say, you'll learn far more about hog slaughtering than you ever dreamed of knowing.) Yet he resists the temptation to make his long-suffering characters into saints. Julie simmers with resentment at being her family's workhorse, and Hank flies into a helpless rage whenever he feels that his authority is questioned. In novels like The Truest Pleasure and The Hinterlands, Morgan proved his ability to create memorable heroines. In Gap Creek, he writes with great feeling--but not a touch of sentimentality--about a life Julie aptly calls "both simple and hard."
reviewed Gap Creek on + 34 more book reviews
Seventeen-year-old Julie Harmon is no stranger to hard manual labor, especially after the death of her father, leaving her the main support for her mother and sisters in their remote mountain home. So when Hank asks her to marry him, she thinks any life they build together will be easy by comparison.

Within weeks, Julie learns just how much hardship the two will have to face in order to make it day to day. Deaths, natural disasters and mean-spirited opportunists combine in such formidable force that the young couple is almost beaten before they've started.

In times like these, Julie and Hank often wonder what it's all worth...but with time, they learn just how much they do need and love one another, and the fledgling life together they're nourishing.
reviewed Gap Creek on + 11 more book reviews
Very enjoyable book
reviewed Gap Creek on + 103 more book reviews
The vived world of the Appalachian high county,in the last years of the nineteenth century.Scratching out a life,always at risk of losing it all.


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