Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
Connection and Diversity in the Mystery Novels of Julia Keller
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Like Elizabeth Catte, mystery writer and Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Julia Keller is “cagey about providing resolute and emphatic markers of ‘Appalachia-ness’” (What You are Getting Wrong about Appalachia, 14). This paper will examine how Keller’s novels set in fictional Acker’s Gap, WV, portray many issues exported to the region from the “mainstream” culture it often mirrors. Keller’s imaginary world features many traits shared with small towns everywhere, as well as some aspects familiar in characterizations of the southern mountains, such as family loyalty, long memory, and interconnectedness with the landscape. Several of her novels feature plots inspired by actual events, recent and older, from Huntington’s ‘rash’ of opioid overdoses to the Buffalo Creek Flood.
Her treatment of such events attempts to capture at least some of the complexities – about who takes drugs, the nature and impact of memory, what kinds of experience prompt post-traumatic stress, and how ‘good’ people cope with bad circumstances in spite of skimpy resources and negative media images. Keller often includes characters – non-white, LGBTQ, well-educated – that do not fit the major stereotypes and do add nuance to a West Virginia profile. These characters challenge monolithic views of mountain people, but Keller’s disclaimers that such people do actually live in the mountains sometimes come across as exceptions that ‘prove the rule.’ This paper argues, though, that Keller’s overall portrayals point to identities that interact inside and outside the region in ways that are connected, diverse, and dynamic.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
B.A., English, Rice University; Ph.D., American Studies, Yale University; faculty in English at WVSU since 1991; native Texan, naturalized Appalachian.
Connection and Diversity in the Mystery Novels of Julia Keller
Like Elizabeth Catte, mystery writer and Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Julia Keller is “cagey about providing resolute and emphatic markers of ‘Appalachia-ness’” (What You are Getting Wrong about Appalachia, 14). This paper will examine how Keller’s novels set in fictional Acker’s Gap, WV, portray many issues exported to the region from the “mainstream” culture it often mirrors. Keller’s imaginary world features many traits shared with small towns everywhere, as well as some aspects familiar in characterizations of the southern mountains, such as family loyalty, long memory, and interconnectedness with the landscape. Several of her novels feature plots inspired by actual events, recent and older, from Huntington’s ‘rash’ of opioid overdoses to the Buffalo Creek Flood.
Her treatment of such events attempts to capture at least some of the complexities – about who takes drugs, the nature and impact of memory, what kinds of experience prompt post-traumatic stress, and how ‘good’ people cope with bad circumstances in spite of skimpy resources and negative media images. Keller often includes characters – non-white, LGBTQ, well-educated – that do not fit the major stereotypes and do add nuance to a West Virginia profile. These characters challenge monolithic views of mountain people, but Keller’s disclaimers that such people do actually live in the mountains sometimes come across as exceptions that ‘prove the rule.’ This paper argues, though, that Keller’s overall portrayals point to identities that interact inside and outside the region in ways that are connected, diverse, and dynamic.
