North Carolina Miscellany
sin, the Mountain God, to protect her; and develops her shamanistic powers. She stays busy for the rest of the novel exorcising all the family ghosts floating around in the Aiken ancestral home and protecting Aiken’s dying parents from demons. Garstang plays coy on how much of this stuff is “real” in the context of Aiken’s western culture, but there’s a pretty good Southern gothic knocking around inside The Shaman of Turtle Valley, one in which the women of the Alexander clan, like Turtle Valley’s Korean shaman, are busy behind the scenes, pulling the strings of the men in the novel. Aiken’s mother, for example, is a traditional folk healer who sometimes brews up sinister potions that she later regrets using. Garstang spends a lot of time building these parallels between Soon-hee and Aiken’s mother – “that girl and I, we’re too much alike,” Aiken’s mother remarks (130), in case we’ve missed it – but they don’t pay off with the punch they seem intended to have. Unfortunately, they do lead to a troubling conclusion in which Soon-hee disappears onto
Brother Mountain, presumably in spiritual form, rescinding her role in her son and husband’s lives so that Aiken can be reunited with Kelly, his first love, who tells Aiken that he “can’t just expect [her] to forget about what happened between us,” and then promptly moves in with him (390). The rape is, if not forgotten, forgiven, and the uncomfortable business about Aiken’s missing wife is resolved when Soon-hee conveniently becomes, according to Aiken’s son, Henry, “some kind of good spirit watching over us [who] has managed to frighten away whatever – or whoever – was haunting this house” (391). In short, Soon-hee cedes her role as Aiken’s wife and Henry’s mother to an American surrogate, but sticks around as a loving spirit protector for his new family. Her actual fate as a corporeal human being is never quite clear. She just evaporates once she has fulfilled her function as Aiken’s redeemer. It’s hard not to see this as a variation on the Magical Negro trope, in which a brown person with
Originated by the Louis Lipinsky family and now also supported by Michael Sartisky and the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Advisory Board, the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award is presented annually to a work that focuses attention on Western North Carolina. According to Catherine Frank, Chair of the 2020 selection committee, Sandra Muse Isaacs won “for her scholarship and for offering us a new lens on the original people of our region” in Eastern Cherokee Stories: A Living Oral Tradition and Its Cultural Continuance (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019), which “helps the reader see the oral tradition of the Eastern Cherokee as both an ancient and contemporary means of expressing culture and identity. She allows us to see the ways in which stories continue to have the power to educate and motivate a people rooted in a deep respect and understanding of all living things.” n
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mystical powers sorts things out for some benighted white person, before conveniently sacrificing herself (or otherwise disappearing), so that the newly enlightened white person can get on with his business. I don’t think this novel is the birdhouse Garstang intended to build, but this seems to be one he has built. I admire the ambition of the craftsman who made it, but the seams don’t meet quite as tightly as they should, and I’m not at all comfortable with the ideological implications of the wind that’s blowing through the cracks. I believe there are better birdhouses out there. But it’s worth remembering the arc of Aiken’s birdhouse career. He starts with saltbox house “monstrosities,” keeps practicing his craft, and winds up building cathedrals. The evidence on offer in House of the Ancients and The Shaman of Turtle Valley suggests that Clifford Garstang’s career might follow the same arc as Aiken Alexander’s. If he keeps the table saw running, he may yet make a cathedral. n
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2020 THOMAS WOLFE MEMORIAL LITERARY AWARD HONORS EASTERN CHEROKEE STORIES
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