Barrowfields

Author/Guide: Phillip Lewis

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1930s onwards: A coming-of-age story about fathers and sons, set in the Appalachian Mountains

ISBN: 978-1473636828
Genre: Fiction

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What you need to know before your trail

Just before Henry Aster’s birth, his father, a frustrated novelist and lawyer, reluctantly returns to the remote North Carolina mountains in which he was improbably raised and installs his young family in a gothic mansion – nicknamed ‘the vulture house’ – worthy of his hero Edgar Allan Poe. There, Henry grows up under the desk of this fierce and brilliant man. But when a death in the family tips his father toward a fearsome unravelling, what was once a young son’s reverence is poisoned, and Henry flees, not to return until years later when he, too, must go home again.

Locations

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America/USA - The Appalachian Mountains
A: "Old Buckram"
B: The Appalachian Trail

Travel Guide

The Appalachian Mountains

Old Buckram is a fictional old town where time has stood fairly still since the first people came to the area and set up the settlement. It sits in “high in the belly of the Appalachian Mountains.”
Beyond the outskirts of the town sits the Barrowfields, a place barren and raw. Nothing grows here and nothing seems to change. The village is a series of shacks and small houses. Henry and his family live here, but he wants more for them.

Henry is a great man in the sense that he admire authors so much he wants to be more like his favourite, Edgar Allan Poe. For now, he lives on a creepy black house on the side of the Appalachian Mountains. It’s a black house with a black past. When he marries Eleonore, they live in an apartment in Baltimore near both the Edgar Allan Poe house and the H.L. Mencken house.

But it’s the Barrowfields that can still be seen through the fog and mists of time.

Booktrailer Review

Susan: @thebooktrailer

This is a book of some of the most atmospheric settings ever evoked in a novel. The mountains, the stunning Appalachian Mountains is the setting as well as the overall character and the scenes are symbolic to the action of the plot. The mist on the mountains stops people seeing clearly, the high level houses are remote and claustrophobic,all-seeing but seeing nothing.The house they live in is a grand cold place and the house has more secrets than any one in the book combined!
The story of Henry and his father weaves up and down those mountainous paths and it’s one of obstacles and hidden paths. The past is recalled in a series of anecdotes which pop up naturally in the story as they would in real life. The story is haunting in many ways.
I did enjoy the way books and authors houses were wrapped into the plot. Very nice.It’s a book about books as well which was a real highlight for me.

I struggled with the lack of resolution in other areas however. There’s a fair bit you have to decide for yourself which weakened the appeal of the book for me.
Atmospheric writing though.