‘Tore All to Pieces’ goes beyond Appalachian stereotypes

Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.’s Tore All to Pieces is described on its front cov­er flap as being a “frag­ment­ed nov­el,” which is a log­i­cal sort of descrip­tion, since the nov­el is told through a series of short sto­ries and inter­spersed poems. Set in the towns of Mosely and near­by Battersburg, small and slight­ly larg­er towns in rur­al east­ern Kentucky, Carver gives us real and com­plex peo­ple deal­ing with their real­i­ties in ways many peo­ple can relate to — because they have faced sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions and had sim­i­lar reactions.

Tore All to Pieces is not a his­tor­i­cal nov­el, but a piece of the his­to­ry that is the sto­ry of the Appalachian region. There are his­to­ries that deal with Kentucky’s parts of the region, writ­ten by peo­ple from the region. Notable among them are Harry M. Caudill (Night Comes to the Cumberlands,  1963) and  Ronald Eller’s (Miners, Mill Hands, and Mountaineers, 1982).

But there are prob­a­bly more notable Kentucky writ­ers of fic­tion, includ­ing plays, set in Appalachia than there are his­to­ri­ans; but that is my bias, not nec­es­sar­i­ly a truth. Among those fic­tion writ­ers one finds Gurney Norman, George Ella Lyon, James Still, Frank X Walker, Chris Offutt, Barbara Kingsolver, Crystal Wilkinson, Gwyn Rubbio, and play­wrights such as Heather Henson,  Bo List, Robby Henson, and Angela Correll. 

So with this book Carver is join­ing an impres­sive cast of colleagues.

Unlike in Norman’s Kinfolks (1977), whose char­ac­ters live whol­ly with­in their com­mu­ni­ty and — at least I can’t imag­ine them liv­ing out­side it — I can see some peo­ple from the com­mu­ni­ties of Mosely and Battersburg going else­where (per­haps strug­gling, per­haps not) and tak­ing on the world out­side the con­fines of their home com­mu­ni­ties. In Kinfolks I was impressed that at least some of the sto­ries were ones in which stereo­types took on flesh — at least for a bit, before dis­ap­pear­ing into the back­ground of a dif­fer­ent real­i­ty, a dif­fer­ent time.

In Carver’s world, on pages ix and x, we are intro­duced to the cast of 37 char­ac­ters we imme­di­ate­ly begin meet­ing in the sto­ries and poems that fol­low including:

 Big Jason. Randall Mullins’ Oldest. Drunkard up Cow Creek . . .
 Caleb. That’s Marvin’s boy — the one that dat­ed that drag queen from Battersburg.
 Crissy. That lit­tle girl that cooks over at the grade school. Ain’t big­ger than half the kids.
Joyce. She’s the preacher’s wife at the church over at the head of Ice Plant.

Those and oth­er char­ac­ter descrip­tions in just two pages help read­ers set the stage in their own minds for the char­ac­ters and sit­u­a­tions to come. Through descrip­tions we meet the towns­folk and start to see how peo­ple there are indi­vid­u­als; indeed, the com­plex­i­ty of the com­mu­ni­ties that the book intro­duces us to won’t allow us to pull out our stereo­types if the peo­ple we meet don’t fit them. 

Two pages in and already it is evi­dent that Tore All to Pieces will be a dif­fer­ent sort of book.

Carver’s nov­el meets its char­ac­ters where they are. He shows rather than tells about their sit­u­a­tions, their deci­sions, and the con­se­quences that fol­low. We see not issues but peo­ple. There are young men who flirt with each oth­er, dis­cov­er and explore their sex­u­al­i­ty not because to be gay is wrong, or they’re thrown out of their high school prom, but because they engage with each oth­er, help each oth­er, and ten­ta­tive­ly reach out towards each other.

In “Matching Tuxedos” we meet Jamie ask­ing Melissa to prom and her accept­ing. She has “curves that jig­gle” and already looked to Jamie “like she could be somebody’s mom” (86).

For her part, Melissa rec­og­nized that he had not been “invit­ing no girls under them bleach­ers after bas­ket­ball games” (87). Why they might be going to prom togeth­er is an imme­di­ate ques­tion some may won­der at, and oth­ers might rec­og­nize. This is a sto­ry about com­ing of age with mutu­al aid ele­ments but, unfor­tu­nate­ly, an unsur­pris­ing ending.

Other sto­ries find char­ac­ters deal­ing with ill­ness, job­less­ness, and unex­pect­ed down­pours that lead to inevitable flood­ing. “Storing Cabbages” is about a son res­cu­ing his moth­er from a flood and offer­ing her a new place — his home — for her future. This is not a sto­ry of a fam­i­ly dis­placed and wait­ing on gov­ern­men­tal. Rather, it dis­pels stereo­types as it tells a warm (and wet) sto­ry of lov­ing rescue.

Only one sto­ry here seems more moral­i­ty tale than sto­ry, aris­ing from what might be local his­to­ry or myth. “The Worthy” is a sto­ry not of hypocrisy but of a bold self-right­eous­ness that leads to tragedy. A local pas­tor sends away a local plumber fix­ing the church bathroom’s plumb­ing “on account of you not being saved” (166). Inevitably, when the church acci­den­tal­ly catch­es fire, a gay vol­un­teer fire chief shows up to put out the fire, and the pas­tor attempts to pre­vent him and his men from putting it out. This is a sto­ry well told, fas­ci­nat­ing to behold as one action leads to the next enlarge­ment of the church’s minor fire into a pos­si­ble com­mu­ni­ty con­fla­gra­tion, as read­ers rapid­ly turn pages to see what will hap­pen to the church, the pas­tor and Mosely.

Without a doubt Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr.’s Tore All to Pieces is as Robert Gipe describes it “Good-ass sto­ry­telling.” So, don’t let Gay Poems for Red States (University of Kentucky Press, 2023) be this author’s only lit­er­ary suc­cess. You (and he) deserve better.

Tore All to Pieces by Willie Edward Taylor Carver
(Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2026)
Price $27.95 ISBN: 9781985903708, 208 pp