Saturday, December 19, 2009

Cold Sassy Tree By Olive Ann Burns

It is while reading Olive Ann Burns' Cold Sassy Tree that I came to permanently discard that dream of writing a book one day. Guess anyone who read books will eventually toy with the idea of writing one and I thought I had it in me to write just one such book. Luckily for you that wish is gone for good:-)


Mrs. Burns wrote Cold Sassy in her later years and the sequel Leaving Cold Sassy was published posthumously from a partially completed manuscript. I own both books and consider them good acquisitions. Burns describes her efforts at writing a book in the sequel. In fact half of it is a reminiscence about the author's life by friend and editor Katrina Kenison. This brought to surface the practicalities of such an effort and I understood that I simply am not up to the task. Luckily for me google came along with this perfect spot where I can 'publish' what I write if that is what I think it is or keep a journal if that is how one looks at it. Nice setup. Eh?

So Mrs. Burns deserves the credit for showing me the light and google's blogger deserves the credit for giving me closure. Seriously, we are talking about a true classic here. This book will be read by many more generations after other books have been read and discarded. It is a sweet and simple account of small-town Southern life in the post civil war era America. It revolves around young Will Tweedy and his strong and colorful  Granpa Blakeslee and the family and people that surround them. Read here for a summary of each of the chapters. The google link in the first sentence will let you read a whole lot of pages from the book. Read here for amazon reviews. Fictitious Cold Sassy town was named for a tree of the same name that stood on the road leading into the town. When townfolk felt they needed a new name Granpa Blakeslee will hear none of it. The book is replete with such stories and more. Read here for a complete summary.