Slender Is the Thread
by Harry Caudill
“Reading the tales spun out of Harry Caudill’s Letcher County law office, I can close my eyes and see the man, even hear his rich mountain voice—measured, distinctly accented, engaging, etched with wit and anger and compassion. He had all the tools: a partisan’s commitment, a historian’s detachment,
a storyteller’s fine sense of pace and timing. The highest compliment I can pay him is this: He wrote like he talked, and when you read him, you’re listening to him.
Harry may be gone, but his words and his wisdom hover like mist on the mountains. They are his lasting gift to Kentucky and the nation.”
—John Egerton
“Storytellers are born, not made—although the stories they weave may be at least partially ‘made’ from their knowledge of the human character, their fertile imaginations,
and their reach for hearty, unstinting healthy laughter. Harry Caudill was a storyteller. One of the best. He had a keen eye for the unexpected detail, an ear for the unique turn of phrase,
and a flowing oratorical delivery. He denounced scoundrels of high and low station, praised courage and justice wherever he found it, and celebrated the ridiculous frailty of the human condition.
The next best thing to hearing Harry tell these tales from his ‘country law office’ is to have them collected here for our perpetual enjoyment in Slender Is the Thread.”
—Wilma Dykeman
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