History and folklore both come to life and demand a reckoning in Kimberly Brock’s latest novel The Fabled Earth. Old secrets hang like ghosts around the town of Revery and nearby Cumberland Island as three women learn how to confront the past and move forward into a new future.
The Summary
The Fabled Earth weaves together two timelines and the lives of three women — artist Cleo Woodbine, folklorist Frances Flood, and the newly widowed innkeeper Audrey Howell.
In 1932, Cleo arrives on Cumberland Island with dreams of following in her grandfather’s footsteps to become artist in residence at Plum Orchard, estate of her grandfather’s friend Dr. Johnston. The doctor has agreed to give Woodbine Cottage to Cleo in exchange for her services as companion to a young woman named Joanna Burton for the summer. Cumberland Island is known as the playground of the Carnegie family, and Cleo finds herself thrust headfirst into the lives of a group of young elites.
The annual Plum Orchard bonfire and storytelling competition ends with the deaths of two young men and Joanna sent home in disgrace. Cleo earns her residency at her grandfather’s old cottage, but at the price of decades of isolation.
Twenty years later, Joanna’s daughter Frances arrives on Cumberland Island looking for Cleo. Her mother has passed away, and Frances has come to fulfill her last requests — to retrieve her mother’s pearl necklace from Cleo and to commission a painting from her.
While waiting for her mother’s painting, Frances stays at the Gilbreath Inn in the nearby town of Revery. There she meets Ambrose “Rosey” Devane and his cousin Audrey Howell. Audrey has returned to her mother’s childhood to run the inn after the sudden death of her husband leaves her a widow at twenty.
Tensions are high in Revery due to the impending integration of the county schools. Against this backdrop, Cleo, Frances, and Audrey confront both the past and their ghosts.
My Review
I found The Fabled Earth to be quite a mixed bag. The three main characters were pretty compelling and likeable. I found it easy to empathize with both Frances’s grief over her mother’s death and her search for answers and Audrey’s efforts to reinvent herself after losing her husband and moving to Revery.
Speaking of Revery, the setting was very vividly depicted. The little town with its charming inn and movie theater were easy to picture and very endearing. Likewise, Cumberland very vibrant. I was familiar with the island from Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and Fight for Cumberland Island by Will Harlan, a biography of conservationist Carol Ruckdeschel. Having read about the current efforts to rebuild the natural habit on the island, I enjoyed reading about it in its previous life as the summer getaway for the Carnegie family and their friends.
Overall the book was well-paced. Brock does an excellent job of revealing the right information at the right time. While the events of the summer of 1932 initially sound like a tragic accident, Cleo’s role in what happened comes to light and we learn that her idealized vision of Woodbine Cottage and her grandfather was sorely misguided. Likewise, by the end of the novel Frances, Audrey, and Cleo’s narratives all come together in a satisfying conclusion.
I had a couple of significant issues with the book. The first was the romance between Cleo and Tate Walker, an employee of Dr. Johnston who is involved in the tragedy in 1932 and comes back to Cumberland after Joanna’s death in 1959. Tate and Cleo have minimal interaction in 1932, but in 1959 they reunite as if they were former lovers. The chemistry fell flat for me.
The other, and more serious, problem I had with the book was they way the characters of color were written. While the white characters are generally well fleshed out and have clear motivations, the Black and Native American characters were a bit two-dimensional by comparison. Lumas Gray, the Johnston’s driver in 1932, primarily serves to warn Cleo away from the poisonous morning glory her grandfather liked to ingest while painting and to be a source of guilt for Cleo after he is swept away by the river.
Harl Buie is a young Black boy who is planning to attend the integrated county school in the fall. He is often spoken of but rarely gets the chance to speak for himself in the book. He works reporting poaching on Cumberland Island, and is therefore hated by many of the white poachers in town. When he and his sister Nan sit in the whites only section of the movie theater, they are chased and attacked by a group of teenagers, giving Audrey the chance to play savior and throw herself between the two groups.
Will Tremmons, Rosey’s Indian friend from the army and co-owner of the movie theater, also helps the Buies escape their persecutors. As a result he is chased out of town, and this time Frances is the one who swoops in to be the hero. Rather than being fully realized characters, these three men are instead reduced to pieces in the conflicts of three white women.
I recognize that is it difficult to make secondary characters feel as complex as a POV character. However, I think that if an author—especially a white author—decides to undertake a subject as sensitive as racism, they have to be held to a high standard when it comes to how they present it.
I initially gave The Fabled Earth a rating of 3.5 stars in our August reading roundup, but after sitting with it a bit more I think I have to give it 2 stars for my full review.
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