{"id":33649,"date":"2013-09-15T19:25:37","date_gmt":"2013-09-15T19:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=33649"},"modified":"2013-09-15T19:26:10","modified_gmt":"2013-09-15T19:26:10","slug":"the-plum-thicket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=33649","title":{"rendered":"The Plum Thicket"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kentuckypress.com\/live\/title_detail.php?titleid=1124\" target=\"_blank\">The Plum Thicket<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kentuckypress.com\" target=\"_blank\">University Press of Kentucky<\/a><br \/>\n1996-04-11 (Originally published in 1954)<br \/>\n284 pages<br \/>\nCloth ISBN: 978-0-8131-1947-2 (out of print)<br \/>\nPaperback ISBN: 978-0-8131-0859-9<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Janice_Holt_Giles\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Janice Holt Giles<\/strong><\/a> (1905-1979)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kentuckypress.com\/live\/title_detail.php?titleid=1124\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kentuckypress.com\/covers\/9780813108599.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Janice Holt Giles had a life before her marriage and writing career in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kentucky\" target=\"_blank\">Kentucky<\/a>. Born in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Altus,_Arkansas\" target=\"_blank\">Altus, Arkansas<\/a>, Giles spent many childhood summers visiting her grandparents there. After the success of her historical novel <em>The Kentuckians<\/em> in 1953, she planned to write a second frontier romance. But a visit to Altus caused her imagination to drift from Kentucky in 1780 to western <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Arkansas\" target=\"_blank\">Arkansas<\/a> in 1913.<\/p>\n<p>At age forty-eight\u2014the same age as Giles at the writing of the novel\u2014the heroine Katie Rogers recalls her first visit alone to her grandparent\u2019s home in Stanwick, Arkansas. Eight-year-old Katie spends her summer climbing the huge mulberry tree and walking with her wise grandfather, a veteran of bloody <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Battle_of_Shiloh\" target=\"_blank\">Shiloh<\/a>. She is fascinated, not frightened, by the grave of an unknown child in the nearby plum thicket. Throughout the visit Katie helps Aunt Maggie plan her wedding and looks forward to the three-day Confederate Reunion. But the Reunion\u2014and the summer\u2014end violently, as guilt, repression, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=450\" target=\"_blank\">miscegenation<\/a> are unearthed. \u201cThat summer was the end of a whole way of life,\u201d Katie realizes, for she can never again dwell in the paradise of childhood.<\/p>\n<p>In Katie Rogers, Giles voiced her own lament for \u201cthe beautiful and the unrecoverable past.\u201d To her publisher Giles wrote, \u201cOut of my forty-odd years of living, much of whatever wisdom I have acquired has been distilled into this book.\u201d This new edition of <em>The Plum Thicket<\/em> gives Giles\u2019s many fans a powerful, moving glimpse into the mind and heart of this beloved author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Plum Thicket University Press of Kentucky 1996-04-11 (Originally published in 1954) 284 pages Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8131-1947-2 (out of print) Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8131-0859-9 Janice Holt Giles (1905-1979) Janice Holt Giles had a life before her marriage and writing career in Kentucky. Born in Altus, Arkansas, Giles spent many childhood summers visiting her grandparents there. After [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[395,11,8,15,20],"tags":[15779,11745],"class_list":["post-33649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiography","category-books","category-media-archive","category-novels","category-usa","tag-janice-holt-giles","tag-university-press-of-kentucky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}