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Music of Falling Water John F. Blair, Publisher "Don't you 'Oh, Sister' me," Kathleen says. "I'm sick of this pretending you don't remember what life was like here. Even for you, the fair-haired daughter, it was no bed of roses." Gertrude is hyperventilating. "Should I get your smelling salts?" Lola asks. It is 1918, and the three Holloway sisters have gathered at the family homeplace to determine the identity of the human skeletal remains found in the millpond. Fifteen years ago, their sister Rhoda, a free spirit who heard ghosts on the wind and loved to climb the waterwheel at the family's gristmill, vanished into the night, never to be heard from again. Though Hackberry Hill is only a couple of hours distant from the thriving Alabama city where two of the sisters now live, it exists worlds apart. For Gertrude, the society matron, coming home means confronting strictly repressed memories. For Lola, the young sophisticate, it brings deep mourning for a lost loved one. For Kathleen, the bitter sister who stayed behind, the gathering is an interruption to both her public routine and her private passion. Over the course of two days, the Holloway women peel back the layers of a complicated past to arrive at a truth that will begin to reconcile a family that has too long been apart. In this richly textured novel, people—from the urbane Jason Howard to the long-dead Miss Lucy to the earthy George Craven—are not at all what they seem on the surface. Though often at odds, together they hold the key to solving a mystery that is both painful and liberating.
Reviews “Set in Alabama in the early 1900s, Oliver's second novel (after Goodbye to the Buttermilk Sky) is the story of the four Hollowell sisters: Gertrude, Kathleen, Rhoda, and Lola. The family once had money but is now land-rich and cash-poor. Gertrude, the oldest, is destined by her ambitious mother to attend college and marry ‘well’ in order to save the family property. Kathleen and Rhoda are understandably resentful of this favoritism. Lola, the youngest and dreamiest child, is blissfully unaware of the family drama surrounding her. When spunky Rhoda disappears after their father's death, the family is too embarrassed to tell anyone, including the local authorities. When their mother dies, wounds are opened that will keep the remaining sisters apart until the discovery of human remains at the old family gristmill. Are the bones those of the missing Rhoda? Alabama native Oliver has drawn an interesting portrait of family filled with resentment, repression, and frustration working toward an uneasy reconciliation. In the Southern Gothic tradition, her most sympathetic characters spend more time among the headstones at the cemetery than among the living.”
Links Read Southern Scribe’s interview with Julia Oliver:
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