Why Bronte Matters... just one good reason

Remember our Appalachian fiction series and my telling you how intense and long was my struggle to select the five titles from a canon of great stories?

Lee Smith was one of the authors who did not make it on our reading/discussion list, although I did initially have one of her books listed for the program.

Fast forward to the present (I must still be in the Fford time machine, the way I am moving to and fro) and our reading of Jane Eyre and Villette. According to this paper by H.H. Campbell, Smith was signficantly influenced by the sisters Bronte.

I highly recommend Lee Smith's fiction. With which one should you start? This is a difficult question for me to answer because I enjoyed all her work. Forced to decide, I would encourage you to begin Oral History. This was one of the titles involved in my decision to use multiple narrators in Reclamation, a manuscript to which I must return for yet another edit.