silas house's works
Clay's Quilt After his mother is killed, four-year-old Clay Sizemore finds himself alone in a small Appalachian mining town. At first, unsure of Free Creek, he learns to lean on its residents as family. There’s Aunt Easter, who is always filled with a sense of foreboding, bound to her faith above all; untamable Evangeline; and Alma, the fiddler whose song wends its way into Clay's heart. Together, they help Clay fashion a quilt of a life from what treasured pieces surround him. |
A Parchment of Leaves It is the early 1900s in rural Kentucky, and young Saul Sullivan is heading up to Redbud Camp to look for work. He is wary but unafraid of the Cherokee girl there whose beauty is said to cause the death of all men who see her. But the minute Saul lays eyes on Vine, he knows she is meant to be his wife. Vine’s mother disapproves of the mixed marriage; But once Vine walks into God’s Creek, Saul’s mother and brother Aaron take to her immediately. It quickly becomes clear to Vine, though, that Aaron is obsessed with her. |
The Coal Tattoo Two sisters are orphaned when their father is killed in a coal mine accident and their mother, insane with grief, takes her own life. Easter, the older sister at 22 is conventional, a churchgoing woman who sees her life as performing her duty. Anneth, 17 is fun-loving, somewhat wild and scornful of authority. The setting is coal mining country in Kentucky in the late 1950s. It covers 11 years to the end of the 1960s. |
The Hurting Part This is a book of beautiful writing that is, simultaneously, an insightful volume about the art of writing. In the various sections of The Hurting Part: Evolution of an American Play, Silas House presents his three-act drama, The Hurting Part, alongside its full literary and developmental context. The book contains not only the full-length script, but also the short story from which the play itself evolved. |
Something's Rising Something's Rising collects oral histories from a diverse group of individuals from Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Virginia who are fighting mountaintop removal, an ecologically devastating form of coal mining. Taken together, these voices stand as a testament of what it means to be an Appalachian and the value of preserving a culture's history and spirit through the stories of its people. |
Eli the Good Eli the Good, Silas' forthcoming novel, will be available in September, 2009. |