Jim the Boy: A Novel

Tony Earley's debut novel, a coming-of-age story set in a remote North Carolina hamlet. The year is 1934, and like the rest of the country, Aliceville is feeling the pinch of the Great Depression.

Jim Glass lives on a farm with his widowed mother and three uncles, who provide company for the boy and offer casual wisdom on life's travails. Jim's father's sudden death at age 23 left a wake of tenderness as his legacy, so much so that Jim's mother still feels married. However, she will never speak to her father-in-law, who has spent some time in jail and is a loner with a rumored penchant for illegally distilled whiskey. The stormy background Earley paints makes Jim's openness all the more haunting. The narrative develops as a series of loosely related, moving stories: the tragic story behind Aliceville's name, a trip with an uncle to buy a horse that becomes a lesson in the transicence of corporeal life, Jim's best friend's struggle with polio, Jim's mother's resistance to a suitor, and the introduction of electricity to Aliceville on Christmas Eve. In a roundabout fashion, in simple prose, Earley brings Jim Glass to knowledge of his identity. An excellent read from one of the top Appalachian writers.