Mode of Program Participation
Academic Scholarship
Participation Type
Performance
Presentation #1 Title
Julia Franks on her novel Over the Plain Houses: Women, Witches, and Fed-up White Men.
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Julia Franks, author of the novel Over the Plain Houses, a finalist for the 2016 Crook’s Corner Prize, on witches, women, and fed-up white men.
Her novel is set in 1939, when the USDA has sent agents into the North Carolina mountains to instruct families on modern agriculture and homemaking. One of them is a young woman with more enthusiasm than experience, but farm wife Irenie Lambey is immediately drawn to the lady-agent’s self-possession. Already, cracks are emerging in Irenie’s marriage to Brodis, an ex-logger turned fundamentalist preacher. To find some time when she’s not beholden to him, she has taken to rambling the night woods, storing the keepsakes of her life in a mountain crevice.
But it’s not long before Brodis becomes suspicious of his wife’s nocturnal life: the midnight excursions, the billowing white nightshirt, the strange talismans, the supernatural stealth. One surreal night he realizes that a certain evil has entered his life. The possibilities unnerve him. Perhaps the malevolence comes from the federal government and the lady agent. Or perhaps it comes from an ancient, more sinister force. This spellbinding debut by Julia Franks is the story of a woman intrigued by the possibility of change and escape—stalked by a Bible-haunted man who fears his government and stakes his integrity upon an older way of life. As Brodis chases his demons, he brings about a final act of violence that shakes the entire valley. Over the Plain Houses bares the myths and mysteries that modernity can’t quite dispel.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Julia Franks has roots in the Southeastern mountains and has spent years kayaking the rivers and creeks there. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where she runs loosecanon.com, a web service that fosters free-choice reading in the classroom.
Julia Franks on her novel Over the Plain Houses: Women, Witches, and Fed-up White Men.
Julia Franks, author of the novel Over the Plain Houses, a finalist for the 2016 Crook’s Corner Prize, on witches, women, and fed-up white men.
Her novel is set in 1939, when the USDA has sent agents into the North Carolina mountains to instruct families on modern agriculture and homemaking. One of them is a young woman with more enthusiasm than experience, but farm wife Irenie Lambey is immediately drawn to the lady-agent’s self-possession. Already, cracks are emerging in Irenie’s marriage to Brodis, an ex-logger turned fundamentalist preacher. To find some time when she’s not beholden to him, she has taken to rambling the night woods, storing the keepsakes of her life in a mountain crevice.
But it’s not long before Brodis becomes suspicious of his wife’s nocturnal life: the midnight excursions, the billowing white nightshirt, the strange talismans, the supernatural stealth. One surreal night he realizes that a certain evil has entered his life. The possibilities unnerve him. Perhaps the malevolence comes from the federal government and the lady agent. Or perhaps it comes from an ancient, more sinister force. This spellbinding debut by Julia Franks is the story of a woman intrigued by the possibility of change and escape—stalked by a Bible-haunted man who fears his government and stakes his integrity upon an older way of life. As Brodis chases his demons, he brings about a final act of violence that shakes the entire valley. Over the Plain Houses bares the myths and mysteries that modernity can’t quite dispel.
