Hill of Beans

KIRKUS REVIEWS: "Turgenev meets Mark Twain in these lyrical, acutely observed recollections wherein the author narrates his Carolina past, unearthing mountains of memories and ties that bind. Snyder is a crack observer, and this debut memoir is at once a reverie of rural life, an ode to men's crafts and boyhood's treasures and a cool refraction of the full-blooded Carolinians who hunted, fished and farmed their patch under the final sunset of the Old South. Snyder spent his early years in the cabin his father built on Cedar Mountain, N.C., where quail roamed and trout peppered the streams. In 1939, his father built a resort inn that bustled for one glorious summer, then fell to an arsonist's match. John and a brother were soon sent to live with two maiden aunts in Greenville, S.C., for school, but learned more about needlepoint, roosters and bigotry. When the family purchased a sharecropper farm in Walhalla, S.C., in 1943, adventures in hoeing and animals began in earnest. John's father, Ted, was a man for all seasons, adept with a poem as well as a gun and a saw, and the narrative sparkles with his vernacular-the winsomely meaningless "consnoggerating" is a term only a 1940s father could invent. Young John tried to live up to his father's polymathic example with tools and inventions of his own, while simultaneously adoring a succession of lovely teachers and studying his world with a fine boy's eye. The result is this book of miniatures, crafted with care and delivered with candor and heart. Each set piece-a burgling collie, a woman who lost her face to the wind, a most unfortunately ill-timed bowel movement-lends gravitas to the author's spectacle of family and humanity below the Mason-Dixon Line. Snyder is hardly the first Southerner to have wondered aloud: Who are my people? But his answer is rich and original. Or as his father might have said-big as the moon and deft as a cat. A finely detailed tableau of the lost Carolinas and a book for the boy in all of us."

"This is great stuff, extremely well remembered. There can't be many memories left of this time and place, and these are richly told."... Roy Blount, Jr., humorist and author of 22 books including CRACKERS, BE SWEET, and ALPHABET JUICE.

"An absorbing and moving exploration of the effect of environment on Character"... Jonathan Galassi, poet and translator of Giocomo Leopardi and Eugenio Montale

"John Snyder writes beautifully and evocatively of a time, of a moment in history, and of the people in a way that makes you feel as if your are right alongside him. I loved this book."... Kathy Poires, Senior Editor, Algonquin Books

"If you had the sort of adventurous bittersweet childhood that many children only dream about after reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books in school, John Snyder's Hill of Beans will be irresistible. From the tremendous larger-than-life father to the stiflingly cruel Aunt Bess, Snyder transmits the images and feelings of a unique childhood wonderfully."... Lydia Crowe, University of Iowa

"John Snyder has conjured up a vanished world. The hardscrabble south he depicts in this beautifully evocative memoir calls to mind Faulkner and Flannery O'Conner. It's a work of inspired anthropology, rich in folklore, and a work of literature."... James Atlas, author of Bellow: A Biography and a memoir, My Life in the Middle Ages

"John Snyder's Hill of Beans evokes an era, a way of life, long passed into history. Recounted in vivid detail, with photographs, candor, affection, humor, this memoir brings to life the voices and struggles, the strengths, the industry, of families and communities long gone. It is a story that helps us understand and appreciate those who came before us, and also helps us understand our own times better. You will be pleased that you read it."... Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek

"As spellbinding, nuanced, intricate, evocative, and absorbing as his highly-crafted metal and wood sculptures, John Snyder's magical, magnificent Hill of Beans is a swirling, recursive American Journey through the rivers and woods and fields of a boy's formative years, along highways of perception, memory, language, and expression, asking what it means to imagine, yearn, experience, and love."... David M. Darst, investment analyst and author of six books, including The Art of Asset Allocation and The Little Book that Saves your Assets

"I very much enjoyed this book. It's a lovely evocation of a southern upbringing, with a fine sense of place and memorable, well-drawn characters, and the portrayals of family life are nicely rendered and often quite moving.".... Charles Gaines, author of Stay Hungry, Pumping Iron, A Family Place, and The Next Valley Over

"John Snyder has recovered a lost universe with a particularity so fine and fresh as to create a kind of poetry."... Diane McWhorter, author of Pulitzer Prize winning Carry Me Home

"Memoir done well is a wonderful and necessary contribution to culture, and Hill of Beans is among the best. These are beautifully written and skillfully layered stories that spring from a place beloved by many, the mountains of North Carolina. The stories have the delicate richness of chocolate, made even more delicious by John Snyder's honesty. I very much enjoyed these real-life adventures of a place and time gone by, told with pathos and love."... Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, A House of Branches, and others.