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NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
A PLACE CALLED VULNERABLE a review by Laura Dennis Karen Salyer McElmurray. I Could Name God in Twelve Ways. University Press of Kentucky, 2024.
LAURA DENNIS teaches in southeast Kentucky. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in various publications, including Change Seven, Northern Appalachia Review, McNeese Review, Still: The Journal, Bluff & Vine, and Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, where she was the Spring 2020 Featured Author. She received honorable mention for the 2017 Betty Gabehart Prize and was a finalist in the 2019 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards. She writes Rural Reflections – The Reboot on Substack, reviews books for a number of publications, and serves as co-editor of book reviews for MER. Her first book, an essay collection, is under contract with the University Press of Kentucky.
OPPOSITE “one of Granny’s Trip Around
the World quilts,” courtesy of Karen Salyer McElmurray
Why travel? The question is not new, as Karen Salyer McElmurray points out in the Prologue to her recent essay collection, I Could Name God in Twelve Ways (xi). She cites Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (1972; trans. 1974), Robyn Davidson’s Tracks (1980), William Least HeatMoon’s Blue Highways (1982), and Anne Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982) as being among the books that have helped inform her response to this age-old question. Like these predecessors, the thirteen lyric essays in McElmurray’s volume provide a range of possible answers. These include not only the perhaps expected quest for novelty and enlightenment, but also an exploration of the far edges and depths of grief. The word “seeker” occurs time and again as we follow McElmurray through time and space, moving from confinement in a psychiatric ward to the freedom of travel, from Kentucky to Crete, from the Grand Canyon to the Ganges. Two voyages recur throughout the text: the many returns to Appalachia, both literally and in the space of memory, and a multi-year backpacking trip in the company of her thenboyfriend Paul. The “then” of that description is significant, for the evolution of their relationship receives nearly as much attention as the journey they undertake.
Winter 2026
Paul first appears in the fourth essay, “And Then the Holy River,” which interweaves their earliest encounters with their stay in Varanasi. The reader soon understands that the speaker’s “longing” (her word) will not suffice to sustain their connection. Paul’s subsequent appearances in the book bear this out. In fact, in its most literal sense, the title refers to their differences: “I can name God in twelve ways and in ten times and places in history, but I can’t name one of the varieties of poppies Paul once planted by the house where we lived” (61). Despite their many conflicts, the journey continues, the gulf between them growing ever wider. The breakup does not come until after their return. It must be said that McElmurray does not take the trip merely to follow her lover. She is also running both away from and toward her own life, from past events that have broken her heart, body, and soul. These include ancestral stories, childhood memories, the son she surrendered for adoption, and the abortion that allowed her to travel with Paul. Along the way, she addresses a number of themes seen elsewhere in her oeuvre, including explorations of liminal space, the practice and teaching of writing, climate change, the nature of desire, and what it means to live in a body, especially a female one. Throughout, the reader feels her
KAREN SALYER MCELMURRAY is the author of several award-winning works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Motel of the Stars (Sarabande Books, 2008), part of which takes place in North Carolina; Wanting Radiance: A Novel (University Press of Kentucky, 2020); Voice Lessons: Essays (Iris Press, 2021; reviewed in NCLR Online Winter 2022); and the memoir Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey (University of Georgia Press, 2004), which won the AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction and was named a National Book Critics Circle Notable Book. Other awards include multiple mentions in Best American Essays, the Annie Dillard Prize, the New Southerner Literary Prize, the Orison Anthology Award, and grants from the North Carolina Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.