Second/Third Week of September: Nature & Food-- Turning Wild Grapes into Preserves

I've had a crazy past couple weeks with work and vacation and all sorts of things. So I figured I would lump my 2nd and 3rd week posts into one, since they kind of go together!

Let's talk about Southern Grapes and Canning....

When we moved in to our new home a year ago, things were wild on the borders of our property.  One thing that was very wild was a grape vine that had woven itself through the chain link fence between our yard and our neighbors:  up and up and up through the trees and was then hanging down over our yard. (It still is.) I picked a few grapes.  Of course they are muscadine--but what variety I have no idea.  I noticed our neighbors have an arbor way in the back of their yard, so inevitably, a bird or squirrel or a strong wind carried a grape to our fence line and nature did it's thing.

In the south, most of your wild and crazy grape vines that people have in their yards, intentionally or not, are a muscadine grape.  There are many varieties of muscadine.  Learn more about them here.  (Note: if from another state, check our your own state's muscadine variety, as from my 5 minute google-research it looks like most muscadine varieties are kind of state-specific). I know mine aren't scuppernong because they are dark purple and small, not big and green.  It looks like they might be the "Thomas" or "Cowart" variety, because they are small-medium grapes and are pretty resistant to...well everything.

Here's a picture of the unintentional vine in my yard

And here's a picture of the fruit I've collected.

Because of the wildness of my vine, most of the fruit was way up out of reach.  So for about a week, I would go outside and harvest what I could from the parts of the vine I could reach.  All in all, I ended up with about a cup or 2 of grapes.

I've recently had the urge to can, but because I do not have a proper water bath--or even a large enough stock pot--most all my canning adventures have been freezer jams.  And that's really not that hard, you smush up fruit, add lemon juice and sugar and instant pectin, let it sit, then freeze.  Whoop-te-do!

I found a recipe from P. Allen Smith that was very simple for Muscadine preserves.  He doesn't add any additional pectin and spelled out simply how to make preserves for canning or freezing.  You can check his recipe out here.

If you are like me and have never made "proper" preserves, I took lots of pictures so you could see what each step looked like.  I probably had about a fourth of what Smith had, so I had to quarter the recipe.

First you have to separate the skin of the grape  from the pulp.  This was easy.  Smith says use a knife to open the grape and squeeze out the pulp.  My fruit was ripe enough, I could just squeeze it out with my fingers.  This was pretty messy, but fun--I think this would be a lot of fun for kids.  You end up with two containers--one with the grape skins, the other with the pulp that looks like green seedy-snot slime.

 Next you boil your snot-slime with a little water.  This breaks down the pulp from the seed.

While that's going, you take your grape skins and chop them finely in a food processor.   Eventually you will have to add lemon zest and juice to your pulp mix--so I went ahead and poured that on my chopped skins. 

After your pulp has boiled for a bit, you need to strain it to get the seeds out.  I had to use two strainers, because the first was too small. 

You should end up with mostly only seeds left in your strainer and the pulp has gone all through.   Discard the seeds.

So then back in the pot goes everything:  your strained pulp, your skins and your lemon juice and zest.  PLUS a bunch of sugar. 

 Bring this to a boil and let simmer for a while.  I did about 10-15 minutes.  It'll start to get thick and congealed slightly.  Make sure your stir it frequently!

And then, "wa-la":  grape preserves.  As you can see about a cup and a half of grapes only ended up about a half cup of preserves.  But they tasted fantastic.  It also made my kitchen smell amazingly perfumed.  

I recommend, if you have a grape vine, or know where to find one--to try this recipe out.  It doesn't cost a thing but the price of 1 lemon, some sugar (which most of us have on hand anyway) and about 20 minutes of your time.  Of course, if you are going to can them properly it'll take more time--but this is pretty easy if you're just freezing or going to use immediately.  This would be a good addition for anyone who is taking biscuits or scones to a party!

First Week of September: Reading--Ellen Glasgow's "Vein of Iron"

Didn't quite get this one in on the first week of the month, but oh wells...

Let me start out by saying that I really enjoyed this book. It has a lot of merits and I recommend reading it.

However, I'm about to get critical--very critical of this book and I feel bad about it, because I enjoyed it thoroughly. Glasgow is a beautiful writer; however, I think her structure is lacking and I'll try to explain why (while probably being unstructured and super tangent-y in my post).

Ultimately, Vein of Iron is a novel with conflicting main characters.  Not that the two main characters of the book fight a lot, but you don't know which one is "in charge" of the story.  Is this is a story of a man who lost his faith and struggles to be a brilliant "Philosopher" in the Appalachians during the early  20th century, or is it a story about his daughter and her struggles with love and a changing world?  You get this very tight tension between this being a romance novel or  actual "Big L" literature.  You can do both of these at the same time (i.e. Austen or Bronte to name a few), but the way the structure and characters are presented in Glasgow's work makes this crux hard to get over.  The majority of the novel's plot is about Ada and her relationship with her family and "the love her life", poor old Ralph.  But randomly, almost abruptly you get these chapters sporadically placed in the novel that concentrate on Ada's father, John Fincastle.  Even though, I found these chapters of the novel some of the most brilliant in the entire book, her father's sporadic place in the novel becomes a bizarre contrast to Ada's romantic story line.  The book continually mentions how Ada and her father are alike, the connection they both have--yet  you never really see it played out.

John Fincastle, at his core, is compelling (more so than Ada's in my opinion).  He's a Presbyterian minister who is removed from the church because of (I guess?) his giving up the faith.  He becomes a philosopher who continually questions the nature of God and people.  But you never really get to know what his philosophy is.  You just know he's a philosopher and is brilliant and is writing a book, but because you never learn what it is that he believes, you never really know who he is.

I feel as if Glasgow had connected Ada with her father more or if she had given her father a more substantial role in the book,  the question of whether this is a romance novel or literature wouldn't even need to be asked and it would weld those two types of fiction together.  In comparison with one of my favorite books about Appalachian women: Fair and Tender Ladies does much of the same plot-wise as Vein of Iron.  It centers on the life of a woman who is poor and living in the Appalachian Mountains throughout the 20th century.  But Fair and Tender Ladies is grittier.  Maybe this has to do with the education of the families of the main characters.  Of maybe because Ada lives in a Valley and in FTL the characters live (for most of the book) high up on a mountain--much more remote.  Or maybe because Lee Smith knows her book will be middle brow, she doesn't try too hard.  Her plot is amazing, and through that plot she's able to smack you across the face with ideas, themes, and "human truths." That's the genius of a lot of middle brow novels---they can be almost, if not just, as effective culturally as major literature, without being scary or too hoity-toity for the Average Joe to pick up, read and really GET something out of it.

I feel I've gone off into a tangent.  So let's pull back and look at the great things in this novel, what makes it worth reading....

Glasgow's use of language throughout the novel and her descriptions of the land and the place are very beautiful.  I continually felt like I was looking at the mountain valley town of Ironside through "soft light", as if it were a dream.  A book that can make a character out of the setting is always interesting to me.

Certain scenes that were breathtaking:

• Ada's heartache over Janet crushing her dreams
• The heartache and jealousy Ada felt in this scene is so richly written that you feel as if Ralph and the stupid "rules of society" have broken your heart as well
• Ada and Ralph's romp in the forest
• Instead of being smutty, or even too vague, Glasgow walked a line of, again, keeping these scenes very dream like.  You understand that Ada and Ralph are up on the mountain, having a weekend of consummating their relationship.  However, it's important enough to the novel that Glasgow doesn't just write it off with a dot-dot-dot at the end of the chapter and have the characters think back on it later. 
• Ada giving birth
• I got very choked up when Ada's grandmother "rescues" her during her labor.  Ada's grandmother shuns her and has her own heart broken because of Ada's pregnancy out of wedlock.  How emotional it was when her grandmother comes to help her give birth and how heartbreaking it was that even though her grandmother helps her during this moment, it doesn't deter her grandmother's demise and heart-ache over the situation.
• The Death Scene of Ada's Father
• Rambling and scary, beautiful and peaceful, when John Fincastle lays down in the grass outside of his family's dilapidated home, you understand how important place and land is to people who don't have much.

3-3.5 out of 5.  A great read, especially if you enjoy books about the south, place, and the changing landscape of the world in the 1920s and 30s.

Other quick notes:

• I think Glasgow does a good job of portraying what we would now consider "PTSD" in Ralph, or if not that, how war can bring out the dark side of someone, even way after the fighting is over.
• Simplistic moral of the story:  If you have a home, a garden and family, nothing else should matter.

4th week of August: Things to Do--THE Quintessential North CarolinaTour (if you know me)

For anyone who has briefly been in the presence of me or my husband, you quickly understand how much we love our home state of North Carolina.  Proud Tar Heels that will only and forever pull for the Wolfpack, we've had friends tell us we should start a North Carolina travel agency. So, one day I thought about what would be the quintessential North Carolina tour that we'd take our friends on.

This would include some iconic NC spots, but mostly places that are dear to our hearts and our heritage. It would be a whirl-wind road trip, but that's part of the fun!  Most of the time would be spent driving, but when you are in NC the drive is always beautiful.

So, join us, won't you, as we mentally go through the proper 10 day NC tour!  (Warning, this post will contain a lot of links, the idea is for you to web-explore these places on your own!)

Day 1: Whiteville

Columbus County Courthouse: Whiteville, NC 

To begin, we'd start out from our current home town in South Carolina and drive north and slightly east up I-95 to I-74 (or is it HWY 74 here, who knows?) and go to the hometown of my husband, Whiteville, NC.  He could tour us around, try to find where A.R. Ammons grew up, go to the NC Forestry museum, drive through the back roads, maybe even to Crusoe Island, a small community with their own neat way of talkin' where Matt's family is from. (Called an island because they have bodies of water  completely surrounding them. Before the bridge was built, the members of this community had to cross water to go into "town".) The first night of our trip we'd stay in Whiteville.

Day 2:  Lake Waccamaw and Ayden

Pier at Lake Waccamaw, NC

Day 2 we would wake up early and drive to Lake Waccamaw (10 miles East) and hang out on a pier, or go to the state park and hike.  Then we'd drive up through Eastern NC on HWY 11 up to Ayden.  Ayden is where there is Pete Jones' Skylight Inn BBQ:  THE place for Eastern NC BBQ.  We'd eat there for a late lunch and then head on up through Little Washington to HWY 64 and drive East to Manteo, where we'd stop for the night.


Day 3:  Manteo/ OBX

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse: Buxton, NC

We'd spend the morning at Fort Raleigh and wondering about the mystery of the Lost Colony, then stroll through the beautiful Elizabethan Gardens, grab a lunch and explore downtown Manteo. Then we'd drive down HWY 12 to Cape Hatteras.  There we'd spend the afternoon walking on the beach, checking out a lighthouse or two, bird watching at Pea Island, and finish up with watching a sunset over the Pamlico Sound

Avon, NC

Or a moon rise over the Graveyard of the Atlantic:

Avon, NC

We'd drive back to Manteo for the night.


Day 4:   Raleigh

View of downtown Raleigh, NC at night from Boyland Bridge

Day 4 of our whirl-wind journey, we would get up early and drive 64 West to Raleigh.  Once there we can hang out with my awesome sister and brother-in-law and grab a hot dog at The Roast Grill (Which could have it's on blog post on here.  Maybe someday).  We'd then walk around our Alma Mater and finish by having dinner or a drink at the PR .  No need for fancy Raleigh "foodie" dinner, we're keeping it real.

The Roast Grill: Raleigh, NC

Day 5:  Lexington

Famous Lexington Barbecue (From The Monk)

Next morning we'd get a Char Grill Hamburger Steak burger on the way out of town.  We'd drive 64 West all the way to my home town of Lexington, NC.  Now here's the rub:  before we get to Lexington, we can spend a day at the NC Zoo, one of my favorite places.  However, then we will have less time in Lexington (and by Lexington I mean Winston Salem, cause there's not much to see in Lexington besides BBQ and my family).


Day 6: Lexington/Wine Country/ Boone

Horse Farm in Valle Crucis, outside Boone, NC

Get up and hang out with my awesome Grandpa!  Then get a Lexington BBQ sandwich for lunch (the best BBQ sandwich of your life and you can only get it at Lexington #1--or as we locals call it The Monk).  Don't be alarmed, though, I'll probably get a hamburger....(this is a story for another time!) Afterwards we'll drive HWY 421 through the foothills to Boone.  We may even stop somewhere in the Yadkin River Valley for refreshments!


Day 7:  Boone/ Crabtree Meadows/ Mt. Mitchell**

Mt. Mitchell

Get up early and have breakfast somewhere "hip" in Boone, like Proper or Stick Boy. Then we'd drive the "BRP" down past Grandfather Mountain to Crabtree Meadows (mile post 340).  Here we'd hike to my favorite spot in all of North Carolina.

Crabtree Falls

Then, if time allows, we'd keep driving south and head up towards Mt. Mitchell--the highest peak east of the Mississippi!  Afterwards, we'd keep going  until we end up in Asheville, where we'd spend the next 2 nights.

**Matt and I had plans to do this leg of the trip when we go to the mountains in September, however a road closure on the BRP has made it impossible.  Also Crabtree Meadows is closed for the 2013 season.

Day 8:  Asheville

Downtown Asheville

Spend the day in Asheville, hang out, go to Biltmore, whatever we want!  Asheville kind of has it all: Shopping, Hiking, Eating, Drinking, Exploring!

Gargoyle over looking Biltmore House

Day 9: Bryson City

Bryson City Garveyard

Drive BRP to Bryson City and hang out with the Cherokees in the Smokies! If time allows, we may drive up to Newfound Gap or search for some family cemeteries in the National Park. We can stop for the night in Bryson City and head home the next morning, or if we have more time that we thought, we can drive through the winding mountain roads and Pisgah Forest to Brevard and stay there for the night.

Smokies, near Newfound Gap

Some nerd hiking off of the Road to Nowhere

Day 10: Home

Triple Falls in Dupont State Forest

Again, depending on how tired we are, we can get up from Bryson City and head home.  Or if we've stopped in Brevard the previous evening, we can go to Dupont State Forest and discover waterfalls before heading home.  We'll be tired, but happy to have spent the last 10 days in the home-land, the land of the long leaf pine, the summer land where the sun doth shine....

Sunset over my backyard, through the screen porch

3rd Week of August: Food -- Angel Biscuits

So this weekend we had a few friends over for a fancy farewell to THE Ali who inspired this blog.  We're currently not sure how we're going to survive with her more than a few minutes away.  Stay tuned to see how we do...  Matt grilled chicken wings and I planned to make biscuits.  I know, we're so "fancy". I ended up having no time to make biscuits, but maybe this weekend!

The thought of making biscuits inspired me to make those delicious gluten-filled carbohydrates the subject matter for my first food installment on the blog, so here it goes.....

Several years ago for Christmas, my Mom gave me, my sister and my cousin a collection of some of her favorite recipes.

It's a well used little book, with food stains and recipes that are falling out and stuffed in.  It has recipes like Chocolate Chess Pie, Italian Eggplant (Eggplant Parmigiana), Grandma's Christmas Cookies, Lexington BBQ Slaw, etc. Mom also included some photocopies of my Grandma's hand-written recipes, a sweet reminder of how wonderful a cook she was.  These were recipes like Chow Chow and Dried Figs and Beets in Spiced Vinegar.

And a recipe she called "Angel Biscuits".

(I write notes on all my recipes that I try: ya know, how it turned out and what to add or change.  This recipe's note is simply, "mmm...")

I was ecstatic that I finally had a family biscuit recipe!  My husband and I often discuss the difference and importance of "side bread" and what it can mean for you and your family.  The type of bread you are used to at the dinner table often signifies class, or culture, or history or some other small family story that may be very telling and important.  Matt always grew up with these delectable biscuits that were like little toasted clouds.  He also grew up with cornbread, but what you would know as a fried johnny cake--NOT a muffin.

I, however, always grew up with store bought yeast rolls (kept warm in a dish towel in a metal colander by the dinner table).  I still don't know if this was just for ease or if my grandma didn't have enough space in her kitchen to make biscuits--and when you are making a rump roast (which she always did for Sunday/Special Occasion Dinner) it does take up most of your oven.  A small pan of yeast rolls can be shoved into a corner in the oven, or brown while the meat is resting. Biscuits, on the other hand, require a lot more effort, timing and space. At least in my experience.

Maybe there is no reason why I never knew her to make biscuits. Maybe she just preferred yeast rolls.

So naturally, when I see this recipe in my Grandmother's handwriting I was so delighted. "Aha!" I said.  "She DID make biscuits."  Because this was in her handwriting, it had to be her recipe, or one she had gotten from a friend or family member, passed down through generations.

I made the biscuits and they were great! Light, but dense with that doughy sweet flavor only a homemade biscuit can have.  It wasn't greasy like a Bojangles biscuit (not knockin'-love me some Boj), but it was still delectable.  Good enough to eat plain right out of the oven.  And with a little bit of strawberry freezer jam? Good heavens!

I've continued to make them since then about once every other month.  Usually, this occurs when I need Buttermilk for some other recipe.  I'll finish the remanding buttermilk by making biscuits (or pancakes....or both).

So here I am in happy Biscuit Heaven, with the angels, including my Grandma, praising me for carrying on the tradition of making biscuits!

Then, one day, I'm talking to my Mom about "Grandma's Biscuits" and I'm going on and on about them.

She interrupts me and says, "Meredith, your Grandmother never made biscuits."

"But I have her recipe.  You gave it to me! It's in her handwriting!!"

There was a slow pause.

"Oh yeah, I remember.  I think she made them a couple times.  That's a recipe she liked out of my college Home Economic Textbook, so she wrote it down."

Sigh....

I still make the biscuits, and I still think about my Grandmother every time. I've gotten over the fact that they are technically "textbook" biscuits and not some family heirloom.  To me they are still my Grandmother's "angel" biscuits and they always will be.

And with my Mom's homemade James Grape Jelly, nothing on this world is better....

No matter what "side bread" you are used to or wish you had growing up,  learn to make it, cherish it and pass it on to your family so that the tradition of biscuits, yeast rolls, honey rolls, crescent rolls, cornbread, johnny cakes or whatever else can continue on.

"I promise..."

"I promise it won't be 5 months until the next update this time..."  Famous last words, right?  Oh well. 

I'm going to try to get this blog back up and going.  It's main purpose is still for me to record what I think about things I read, but I think if I do that you're still going to get gaps--massive ones.  Some books I've read recently, like "Tender Is the Night" by F. Scott Fitzgerald would probably get a tiny post like this: "Beautifully written, wish I'd never read it."  Other's like Marilyn Robinson's "Home" I'd probably make a bazillion posts about it.  So I probably need to add some diversity, cause I do think about things other than just books.

My husband has inspired me with his blog (seen here).  He's broken it up into daily categories of things he posts.  I probably will not get around to posting every day, however, I will try to do this more frequent. 

A potential schedule could be this (since most months have 4-5 weeks in them):

Week 1:  Something I'm reading
Week 2:  Something about Nature
Week 3:  Something about Food
Week 4:  Something I want to do/have done
Week 5:  Something Random

It's a place to start.

Also, I promise it will be longer than 5 minutes until the next update.

Cheerio!

Been too long, I blame B. Sharp

So I've been reading Vanity Fair for what seems like a decade.  And it's getting to the point where I want to say, "Thackarey, really man, really?"  I mean, it's a good book, even great at parts, but by page 400 of 800 you get it.  The plot is rather boring once you get past the battle and you GET IT!  Becky is a quick witted biotch, Amelia is poor and perfect, Dobbin is the gentle, quiet hero and Rawdon is a dope.  The characters, even Becky, seem one deminsional and while I think his satire of late Georgian/early Victorian english society is hilarious at points, after awhile it become redudant for my tastes.

Poor guy...

I can't help but compare him to Dickens, and every time he does something kind of awesome I think about how Dickens would have done it better.  I didn't have these Dickens > Thackarey thoughts through the first 200 pages of the book.  I actually gave ole Thack props for being Dickens with no filter!  But Dickens with that filter, Dickens is able to crassly comment on Londonites with subtle and intellegent notes.  And 800 pages of Dickens has a flippin' plot---AN INTERESTING ONE AT THAT.

Breathe, it's just a book.

So, on December 15th, I said screw Becky Sharp and cracked open one of my Nonesuch Dickens that my husband got me last year for christmas.  Of course, I opened up the Christmas Books and decided to read the novellas The Chimes and The Cricket.  Both of them were deliciously descriptive.  In the first 2 pages of The Chimes, Dickens describes the wind twirling up the steeple to finally blow the chimes into movement and song---I read 5 times, it was that good.  However, through all this descriptive awesomeness, at the end of the day, the story was a knockoff of A Christmas Carol, where a weird (yet, good) old man sees the lives of those he loves if he had died.  But the descriptions of the goblins, the chimes, of Toby Veck himself were so rich it didn't matter if this was a slight duplication of a better story. 

The Cricket was similar, the story was predictable and small, but poignant and breathtakingly descriptive--how simple to take a cricket on the hearth and create a story about relationships, marriage and love and how the home and the hearth are the centerpeices of our lives.  I can imagine Dickens smoking his pipe on a cold winter night with a dog or cat curled up infront of the fire at his feet and him hear a cricket's chirp and thus the story began.

Neither of these stories were Christmasy--besides the fact that they take place in the week or two after December 25th.  The Chimes were a New Years story. 

But to get back to Vanity Fair and Thackarey.  I guess part of me is blah with this book purely because I've read tons of 800 paged books before (does that sound snobby?)--it's not the length, it's the tireless satire, the characture characters, and the lack of anything really exciting plot-wise.
I've read Anna Karenina--and even then, when you're on page 600 and you feel like you will never finish, still, whatever is happening on the page, whatever description or minor character you are reading about, it still entraps you into a world that is so rich and beautiful. 

I don't know.   Maybe I'll have a different opinion when I finish, I'll get back to you then on final thoughts of Vanity Fair and try not to bash it and find some merit within it.

---k, I finished. 

Anticlimatic and predictable, but I enjoy the fact that Thackarey holds on to the "theatre" theme throughout his narration to the end---so for the last 5 months of my life I read or "saw" a super long satirical play.  Yay me.

Maybe I should have read this when I had tons of time to dedicate it, rather than in short spurts.  However, I believe that's how Thackarey's contemporary readers read it, in periodical spurts.  They must have had much more patience.
On to Hemmingway and "The Sun Also Rises".  I promise it won't be 5 months until the next update this time...

Heading West By Doris Betts

I'm not quite sure what I think about this one.  Well written, insightful and vivid, it was a good novel---but I don't know if I liked it or not.  Does that make sense?  It's like, Wuthering Heights is a good--no, GREAT novel---but damn, if I can't stand the thing.  I had a lot of issues with this novel, but the annoying thing is I think Doris Betts wants me, us, the reader to have issues with it.  The whole Robin Hood vibe at the beginning, the bad boy--when I first started reading, I thought, 'ok wait,is this going to be a stockholm syndrome thing?'  Is Dwight supposed to be sexy or something?  Then, I had to get over my own romance novel reading and realize, ok this is not a cheap $1.99 convience store book--though at times it reads almost as quickly as those books.  (What? Yes, I know how fast they read.)  I'm all for a horribly predictable, fast reading, crappy romance.  The last one of those types of books that I read--which was about 5 years ago---had the whole "pirate" thing and was about a woman being "kidnapped" by a sexy pirate and ooh la la.

But, alas, Dwight is not a sexy pirate.  And the judge is definately not a young, hard-bodied deck hand.  In the crappy romance novel about pirates, that I read (A Pirate's Love if anyone is interested...) the abuctee ends up in the 'final abduction' of marriage.--just to get a little feminist up in here.  Anyway, let's get away from pirates, shall we?

I guess my main issue was with Nancy. I understand she wanted to escape from family and duty.  I get the sadness that the "spinster sister" is often forced to deal with, the frustration of being the one who "doesn't have a life so she purely lives for others."  The one that is FORCED into being a Martha and never gets a chance to be Mary.   I get that.

But holy moly, chick, you use a kidnapping as your "escape"?   I kept wondering why she bargained with her kinapper.  Yay, the west!  NO! No yay!! You are kidnapped--he has a weapon--he might kill you, torture you, etc.  I don't know.  It was just hard for me to read about Nancy at times, seemingly going along with the kidnapping as if it might "mean" something more to her.

Once they do get out west it totally seems like a blur.  That whole episode with J. Waldo--I was mad.  I was mad at the damn kid, I was mad at the damn dude, the damn horses, and, most of all, dammit I was mad at Nancy.  I guess I've never been kidnapped (too bad, I guess?!?) I have no idea the psychological torture that one might be going through.  I guess you don't really realize how demeted Nancy has become until Chan "rescues" her. (Very Angela Carter's "Bloody Chamber"-esque if you ask me.) Then it's clear that Nancy is freaked-- (can we say: finally?)  I think Nancy's journey through the Grand Canyon was maybe one of my favorite parts of the book, if only for it's harsh, hard descriptions.  Emotion, besides paranoia, is absent.  It's as if the Canyon itself, it's depth and vacancy, fills the book to where it's only survival, it becomes only about Nancy's quest to make it to the other side--to escape.  In fact, after it was all over, I was exhausted myself.

Also, why doesn't she want to tell anyone that Dwight fell off the cliff?  Why is that a mystery?  Does she think people will think she's a killer?  Self-defense, kiddo!

But then Hunt Thatcher shows up, and while I'm happy that Nancy is able to find a companion and her "happy ending,"  I'm just not sure what his purpose is.  Is it a reward that she (and we) gets for going through such horror.  I mean, anyone who goes through a kidnapping or any type of trauma totally deserves a happy ending.  But is that realistic?

I wonder if after it's all over, if when Hunt comes to visit Nancy for Thanksgiving, if the happy ending will really happen.

 I dont know, maybe I'm too hard on it.  I read a lot of Victorian fiction and and I get mad if someone doesn't end up married or everyone dies in the end--why should this be different??

Maybe I should just shut up and read Vanity Fair (the next one to tackle).  Or maybe that's just my problem, I do read a lot (too many) Vic lit and not a lot of contemporary 20th century stuff, so maybe my view is scewed.

Maybe becuase to me the Blue Ridge Parkway IS west (having grown up in NC) Maybe I need to expand my horizons.  I just hope I don't have to get kidnapped for it to happen.

Like I said, I dont know about this one?  I'd love some thoughts and commentary.  Am I stupid?  Do I not know what I'm talking about?  Would I have been happier if Dwight had been a sexy pirate to begin with?  Would I have liked it more if it had had some depressing ending where Nancy dies, or goes back to the mundane 'take care of Mama and Becks' world and leaves her chance of love lost in the west?

I dunno.  So I'm going to just read Thackeray.