Hunter's Horn Author:Harriette Arnow Hunter's Horn is the exciting work of an American author who will almost certainly be ranked among the best of our time. Harriette Arnow here displays the true novelist's gift of capturing between the covers of a book a complete locale, with all its sights and sounds and all its living, struggling, laughing people. It is a world so tangible, so... more » alive, that the reader will lose himelf in it for hours at a time and will return to it in memory for years to come.
The world of Hunter's Horn is situated in the hills of Kentucky, where the scrub pine and sumac are taking over the worn-out fields, adn the people-no matter how ragged and hungry at times-live with a zest and a dramatic sense of both joy and sorrow unknown in more sophistocated places.
Over a brush fire in the dead of night, we listen with Nunn Ballew to the baying of the hounds as they folow the great red fox, King Devil. And we understand why Nunn musst keep chasing the perverse creature, and must buy pedigreed puppies, though his fences fall in ruin, his farm stock dwindles, adn his family goes in want.
We go to school with the "youngens" in a one-room cabin. We share with young Suse her ardent longing to go to high school, her first kiss, her dreams of glamorous, far-away Detroit. We laugh with the neighbors over Nunn's first and only attempt at moonshining, and share his pride in the beautiful puppies who are to be King Devil's nemesis. We weep for Lureenie, whose tragedy is as simple and real as that of the deserted girl in an old Kentucky ballad. We encounter the sharp-tongued old midwife, Sue Annie-and dozens of others, all described with rich earthy humor and affection.
Hunts, fires, dancing parties, glorious brawls, growth and decay, joy and pain-we experience them all, as the hills change their colors and the season come and go on the banks of Little Smokey Creek. And as we read, the conviction grows that the Ballews and their neighbors will not be confined to the pages of a book; they will take up a life of their own in the mind and hearts of the reading public.« less