“Last spring I went to Rocky Crossing again. New green grass was sprouting on the high ridge of the road that led there, and now and then there grew a persimmon shoot, or a small hickory, where a nut had fallen and opened deep in the untrampled earth. But the ruts made long ago by passing wagons were still there, guiding the wheels of our car through the dense forest, around the boulders and between the tall trees. I was like a ghost returning to a place once loved.”
These opening lines of Charlie May Simon’s Straw in the Sun invite readers on a personal journey of remembrance as Simon recounts her homesteading experiment in Depression-era Arkansas. Years before she established herself as a regional author of national renown, she chose a spot near Cove Creek, now part of Ouachita National Forest, to forge a home from rugged land, meeting both a backbreaking series of challenges and a vivid cast of characters in the process.
Nationally popular upon its release in 1945, Simon’s lyrical memoir was praised from the outset for its warmth and charm. At once an ethnographic narrative of a hill community and an accessible portrait of Ozarks memories at their most idyllic, Straw in the Sun, offered here with a robust introduction from Simon scholar Aleshia O’Neal, is a classic ready for rediscovery by a new generation of readers.
“In Straw in the Sun,” writes historian Guy Lancaster, “Charlie May Simon never indulges in the easy dichotomies that poison our own politics and culture, for she finds neighborliness, knowledge, and beauty wherever she turns in rural Perry County, Arkansas. She indelibly captures the lives of hill folks while also underlining the truth that all of us are simply passing through this world, standing between the generations before us and the generations to come.”
Straw in the Sun will be published in January 2025 and is now available for pre-order at uapress.com.