“Del walked over to stand near the trunk of a longleaf pine, the strips of bark taken out previously beginning to reveal the telltale cat face. .. He turned it so the sharp edge would hit the tree, and struck once above an old streak. The method came back to him quick. He swiped to the right. This created a new slash above the last. He moved it to the other side and did the same, the two streaks now meeting in that distinctive chevron. The newly made marks allowed gum to run toward the tin gutters positioned to guide the thick, syrupy runoff into a clay cup.”
I’m Betty Martin with "Martin’s Must Reads" and that’s a quote from Donna Everhart’s novel The Saints of Swallow Hill. The book is set during the Depression when work was hard to find and people would endure anything to provide for their families.
Del is a twenty-eight year old who flees a mad husband in North Carolina to work at Swallow Hill, a turpentine operation in Georgia. Most of the workers are Black and treated as indentured servants. Crow, one of the overseers is a cruel man, punishing for invented infractions with either the whip or the sweat box. Few people survive the sweatbox, a coffin like box, locked and set out in the blistering sun.
Rae Lynn was happily married to Warren and worked their own turpentine operation until Warren died and Rae Lynn is forced to leave her home to look for work. She disguises herself as a man and is hired at Swallow Hill. This is a hard look at life in the South during the Depression.
If you’re interested in reading a novel about the turpentine process during a hard time in our country’s history, but with a just ending, then you must read The Saints of Swallow Hill by Donna Everhart.
