Fair and Tender Ladies

Written by Lee Smith

Narrated by Kate Forbes

Author of many novels and short stories, best-selling writer Lee Smith has received numerous awards for her works, including two O Henry Awards. Fair and Tender Ladies is an epistolary novel that traces the life of Ivy Rowe, born in the isolated Virginia mountain community of Sugar Fork. Through births and deaths, marriages and funerals, the decades of Ivy's life are captured in a rich dialect that carries the sounds and sights of the Appalachians in each syllable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 11, 2008
• ISBN: 9781440799860

Lee Smith

Lee Smith is the best-selling author of over a dozen books, including Dimestore: A Writer's Life and Guests on Earth. She lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina.

Reviews for Fair and Tender Ladies

[jinjer-641812 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was so good!!!!

[castlelass · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ivy Rowe, a poor undereducated girl growing up in Sugar Fork, Virginia, writes a series of letters to teachers, relatives, and friends. Through these letters, dating from the early 1900’s to the 1970’s, she tells her life story as well as the history of the southern Appalachian region. She paints a picture in words of her pastoral life, love of stories, family triumphs and tragedies, relationships, and personal decisions that shape her life.

The author evokes a strong sense of place, describing the weather, plants, animals, and natural beauty of the area. Ivy is a spirited, rebellious, and opinionated character. In keeping with the tradition of oral storytelling, and a sense of authenticity, the letters are written using the local dialect, colloquialisms, misspellings, and flawed grammar. The dialect lessens in later chapters, but I found this style bothersome and could only read small portions at a time. Luckily, the epistolary nature of the book makes it easy to read a few letters and come back to it later.

I can only guess that the title is ironic, as there are many strong women found here, and not many “fair and tender ladies.” It is also possible the title refers to the heroines of the books that Ivy loves to read. One of my favorite parts is the sense of immersion into history, as we see Ivy’s family home, farm, and local area become more modernized. Some of these changes pertain to automobiles, coal mines, union disputes, electricity, shopping habits, young men going off to war, and so much more. The author avoids becoming overly sentimental, and I enjoyed it much more than expected.

[bookconcierge · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ivy Rowe is born around the beginning of the 20th century in the mountain cabin where her parents have settled. She is in the middle of a pack of eight children and we learn about her life through the letters she writes, beginning at age 12 to a pen pal in Holland, or to her teacher, and continuing through her long life as she writes to her friends and family over the decades. What a marvelous character! Ivy is curious and adventurous, intelligent if lacking education, forthright, determined, and self-reliant. She makes mistakes and deals with them. She finds love in the wrong places and then with a good man. She observes the workings of the world as it changes around her but remains true to her tiny corner and her mountain ways. She raises children – her own, her neighbor’s, her grandkids. She helps her neighbors, advises her siblings, dares to dream big, and resolves to live well and true to herself. And through it all she writes these wonderful letters, full of all the emotions of life – joy, despair, hope, dejection, enthusiasm, resignation and love, always love. The landscape is vividly portrayed and practically a character. I’ve driven through some of these mountain areas in Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina, but even if I had never seen them with my own eyes, I think I would have a clear picture in my head based on Smith’s descriptions. I could hear the bees buzzing, smell the fragrance of a summer meadow, feel the leaves crunch underfoot on an autumn afternoon, or smell the smoke from a chimney fire welcoming me home on a cold winter evening. Smith also uses a vernacular dialect throughout. However, Ivy’s language (and spelling) improve as she grows from a 12-year-old with limited education to a grown woman who loves to read. There were a few times when I really had to stop to think before I could puzzle out what a word was. For example, Ivy mentions “hunting sang” and continues writing about “sang” … and it wasn’t until she mentioned that it’s only the root, “which looks like a headless man” that I finally realized that she was talking about ginseng. Still, I really enjoyed the colloquialisms Smith used, which gave a definite Southern flavor to the text.

[unkletom_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lee Smith’s Fair and Tender Ladies portrays better than any other book I have ever read, the hopes and joys, and trials and tribulations of a life spent in the hills and hollows of Appalachia. Told in epistolary style using letters written to friends and family of Ivy Rowe, a girl born at the dawn of the 20th century up Sugar Fork on Blue Star Mountain in Western Virginia. Hers is a story rich in the vibrant history of the Scots Irish settlers who carved out a tenuous foothold in the wilderness on the western fringes of a new nation, bringing with them their music, stories, folk traditions and even their love of home-made spirits. Ivy’s story spans four wars and decades of boom and bust as first the loggers and then the coal companies take move in and then pull out once they have taken all they can. It saw the introduction of roads, automobiles, electricity, radios and countless other changes yet it remains a very insular story that tells of childhood, courtships, marriages, births and deaths, all taking place amid the never-ending struggle to make a living in a beautiful but inhospitable land. It is a story that is reflected in the verses from Ecclesiastes:To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.In closing, Fair and Tender Ladies receives my highest recommendation. If you are wondering whether or not you should read it, stop wondering and start reading It. BTW: Those who enjoy audio recordings of their books will be very pleased with Kay Forbes’ narration although you will miss out on a lot of Ivy’s creative spelling.

[nicolewbrown · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Set in the mountains of Virginia, this sweeping novel tells the story of Ivy Rowe beginning in 1914 when she was a young teenager living on a farm way up on the mountain with her sisters and brothers and her father is lying in front of the fire slowly dying. When he does die her mother does what she can to keep the farm going because the farm had been in the family for generations and she wanted to keep it up for her eldest Victor, who has left to go work in a lumber mill. Her next oldest brother, Clarence Wayne, or Babe, who is half of the twins with the other half being Silvaney, is evil, while Silvaney suffered brain damage after a childhood illness is quite simple and loves to traipse about in the forest. Her older sister Beulah dreams of something better, while Ethel is a born talker and saleswoman. Garnie her younger brother is known as the preacher due to his obsession with revivals. Her mother came from a well off family and married for love and was cut off from that family when she did so. Red hair and tempers run in the family.Beulah becomes pregnant with the town boy Curtis Bostick's child, but whose mother won't let him have anything to do with her. So Beulah has the child and names it John Arthur after their father who was being buried the day the child was born. The description of the funeral and burial rites for a mountain person at this time are very interesting. For example, you are buried in your burial quilt with coins on your eyes.When Ivy's mother cannot keep the farm going they pack up and move into a bed and breakfast run by Geneva. At this time it's only Ivy and Garnie, because circumstance has led the others in different directions. Garnie come under the influence of a corrupt revival preacher and Ivy at the age of fourteen becomes pregnant, just as she is offered the opportunity to further her education at a nice school in Boston. Now she has to drop out of school to raise her child. When her mother dies, Ivy and Rose go to live with Beulah and it is there that she meets up again with Oakley Fox the first boy she kissed back on Star Mountain. But there's a much more interesting man who has her eye now.This book is told through a series of letters written to various people in Ivy's life. The unusual thing about this book is that there are no response letters. You are dependent on what Ivy says in her letters to figure out what has happened or is being said by the other person. Also, the language of the book is quite written quite backwoods at the beginning but it improves as her education improves across the novel. It is quite creatively done. Ivy is quite the firecracker and grabs life by the horns and does not let go. She makes mistakes but she does not necessarily regret them. I fell in love with this spirited character who reaches out to the reader connects with you in a very basic way. She will steal your heart away and take it back up into the mountains where she can only live. QuotesA body can get used to anything except hanging.-Lee Smith (Fair and Tender Ladies p 227)And I will tell you the truth—may be it’s best to be the lover, some ways. Because even if you don’t work out, you are glad. You are glad you done it. You are glad you got to be there, anyway, however long it lasted, whatever it cost you—which is always plenty, I reckon.-Lee Smith (Fair and Tender Ladies p 272)I used to be a scandal myself. Now I’m an institution.-Lee Smith (Fair and Tender Ladies p 281)

[jillrhudy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I. . .am. . .Ivy. I've never identified so completely with a character. There may be other books as good about mountain people, but there are none that are superior to Lee Smith's epistolary masterpiece. She illuminates, through Ivy's lifetime of letters, a whole panorama of human experiences and relationships. This is quintessential Appalachian literature.

[athenable · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ivy is a charming mountain girl who grows into a passionate and brave woman who keeps her loved ones close through countless letters.

[teenielee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Overall, this book was interesting, which is why it gets 4 and not 3 stars. I have alway enjoyed epistolary novels and I'm looking forward to reading more of them. The author tells a story about her inspiration for writing the novel this way and it's that she saw a box of letters at an estate sale and shw bought all of them for $5.00. I wish I could find a box of letters like that!

I liked Ivy Rowe and the fact that she was smart and scandalous and was a tough cookie. However, she was a shitty wife and mother and after a while, that whole scene just gets tiring for me. I've never been one to readily hop on board with someone who incessantly hints at their station in life and infers that there's nothing they could have done to stop it. For God's sake, quit whining Ivy! Then I had to get annoyed all over again when she is a stubborn old lady up on the mountain who won't accept help from anyone- but not in an "oh, I've got it taken care of" way, but more in a "don't worry about me, I'm just a little old lady on the mountain all by myself, don't come up here and waste your time. I'm sure you have more important things to do". I don't see this as being independent... it looks passive/agressive and makes me yearn for her inevitable death.

At first, it was hard for me to get used to the Mountain People dialect that was used, but things got easier for me as it lessened with Ivy's age. I think this tool is always kind of a catch-22 for authors: they can paint an awesome picture with it, but by the end of the book, the damn painting just looks like a sloppy piece of crap. There's frigging paint everywhere and it makes my eyes hurt. I also wish the author would have laid off on using the word "rosybush". I could have played a drinking game with the amount of times that word popped into Ivy's letters. In fact, I should have. Perhaps I would have been less irritated.

[sarahfig_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great Book, tugged at my heart.