When I did the research for the recent post on novelist and poet Eleanor Saltzman, I had to make do with reading a copy of her first novel, Ever Tomorrow for an hour or so in one of the few libraries that has a copy. I wasn’t ready to spend $188 for the one copy I could find for sale. I was, however, able to find a copy of her second and last novel, Stuart’s Hill, for … well, less than the $95 it goes for now, and it finally arrived this week.
The book’s cover describes it as “A Tremendously Moving Story of the Life of a Little Community, as Reflected in the Chapel Planned in the Hearts and Minds of the People and Erected by Their Hands.” And hyperbole aside, this is the skeleton of the story. Tired of meeting with a traveling preacher in the little schoolhouse, the farmers in an area some miles from the nearest town decide to put their resources together and build a church. The wives make quilts to raise money for an organ. David McEwen, an upright Scot, offers a piece of land. William Stuart and his wife Margaret offer a hilltop spot in a grove of hickory and oak trees. The congregation votes for Stuart’s hill.
McEwen works on the project “faithfully and earnestly, as was his wont, but sometimes his words were edged with sharpness, and on Sundays something was gone from his voice when he led the people in singing.” Even before the site is cleared, a little crack has begun to open. McEwen urges the men to use bricks from his brother-in-law’s kiln: they’re cheaper. Everyone knows Stamper’s bricks are far superior, but they go along to humor Dave. “We’ll be repairing the foundation in ten years,” some men grumble. A day or so after his first child, a son, is born, William Stuart hauls a load of beams from town, and in his delight, he breaks into song, singing “Horo Mhairi dhu.” McEwen and others mutter about his impiety — bringing materials for the church when he’s liquored up.
As the years go by, the church hosts many services, Sunday school classes, weddings, funerals, church suppers. And the cracks keep appearing. Jealousy over the first automobile. Disdain for a feckless pastor. Angry words. Suspicions about Young Dave McEwen and Eulah Peterson. Young people moving to town. Elizabeth Grayson gets pregnant, and everyone knows Mel Hone, the pastor’s son, is the father.
The service was well under way when Amos Grayson entered, alone. He went to his accustomed pew, and even Jim, seeing his stark, hardened fact, wondered what had befallen the round goodness of his countenance. For his eyes fastened on the minister, and the depths of the hatred of Hell dwelt in them, unyielding….
The people wiped their foreheads, bleakness still as death in their throats, for the despair of their brother Amos touched them electric with knowledge and fear. And their fear was not for Elizabeth alone, not for Amos and Rachel, but for them all and their fellowship seeking the ways of the Lord. Not this, Jesus, not this curse, this violation of our sanctuary. And the hard agony of the good man Amos left them no peace from the tight breath aching within them.
Stuart’s Hill is a lean, strong parable of how a community that lacks the capacity to forgive ultimately destroys itself. Writing in simple, pious language, Saltzman managed to accomplish in under 150 pages what Steinbeck tried and utterly failed to do in the nearly 700 bloated pages of East of Eden.