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A Parchment of Leaves is dedicated to the strong women in author Silas House’s life and inspired by his own Cherokee great-grandmother. In the novel, his second, House takes on—and convincingly pulls off—the challenging tasks of portraying a world long gone, and of seeing that world through the eyes of a character from another culture and of the opposite sex. Set in the years before and during World War I, the story is told by Vine, a young Cherokee woman who leaves her family to marry a white man. Though battling homesickness, loneliness, and prejudice, she works to build a home and a marriage and gradually forms close ties among a group of women who often must fend for themselves as the war and other, more personal conflicts take the men away. But then a horrifying incidence of violence leaves Vine with a terrible secret that threatens all of those bonds—unless family and forgiveness can intervene.
Watch the program [requires RealPlayer®].
Card catalog entry from the Library of Congress
Amazon.com information page
Barnes and Noble information page
Also on our shelves: Silas’ first novel, Clay’s Quilt, was our August 2002 selection.
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