Published by Gallery Books on September 13, 2011
Part One of Ghost on Black Mountain combines a ghost story with that of an abused woman who must decide whether and how to confront her abuser. The tale is told in the first person by Nellie Clay. Nellie’s mother warns her not to marry Hobbs Pritchard, but Nellie is seventeen, innocent, and certain she will lose her chance at love if she doesn’t accept Hobbs’ proposal. After a one day courtship, Nellie marries Hobbs and moves into his house on Black Mountain. She quickly realizes that Hobbs is a hard, ill-tempered, unloving man. Nellie’s problems are compounded when a young girl named Shelly, dispatched by Hobbs’ aunt to help Nellie clean the house, tells Nellie that a ghost is roaming its rooms. Nellie soon encounters not just the ghost in the house, but another who lurks in the woods. Nellie eventually puzzles out the connection between the two ghosts and discovers parallels between her life and the life of Hobbs’ deceased mother.
Part One is written in a convincing first person Southern Appalachian voice, although it occasionally betrays an eloquence that is inconsistent with Nellie’s unsophisticated grammar. The story plods a bit when Nellie starts to keep a diary, filling pages with “how could God let this happen to me?” musings. Several well executed scenes let us see that Nellie is unhappy; reading her hand-wringing diary entries adds nothing new. I was also unconvinced by Nellie’s reaction to the haunting; for a person who claims not to believe in ghosts, Nellie seems surprisingly unperturbed when they show up and start chatting with her.
Part Two is told in the first person by Nellie’s mother, Josie Clay. Josie tells us that we need to know her story to understand how Nellie “got herself into the mess she did,” but Josie’s story actually gives us little insight into Nellie’s life beyond showing us Nellie’s early exposure to yet another ghost. Part Three is narrated by Shelly Parker, the girl who helped Nellie clean her house. Shelly has a gift for seeing haints but isn’t happy about it when Hobbs’ various victims begin to pester her about Nellie. Shelly’s narrative, like Josie’s, does little to advance the story, and she all but disappears from the novel after Part Three concludes.
The first half of Ghost on Black Mountain is more remarkable for its setting and atmosphere than for the story it tells. The novel’s second half is better. Part Four is narrated by Hobbs’ lover, Rose Gardner. Although Rose is only fourteen, hers is the first story told by an educated character; the change of voice was welcome. She’s the one person who remains unchanged by her association with Hobbs and is, I think, the most interesting character. Iona Harbor narrates Part Five. She’s fifteen in 1955 (more than a dozen years after the conclusion of Part Four), living with her family in Georgia. The connection between Iona’s story and the rest of the novel becomes apparent only after we learn that Iona’s mother (who narrates Part Six) carries with her a secret past. An improbably coincidental meeting in Part Five joins Iona to one of the characters introduced in Part Four while Part Six brings the story full circle.
What begins as a seemingly predicable ghost story evolves into an unconventional novel of greater depth. Ann Hite’s characters and winning prose style impressed me immediately, but I didn’t warm to the story until its midway point. Fortunately, the addition of Rose and Iona to the cast saves the novel from mediocrity. The coincidental meeting in Part Five is essential to the plot but requires an even greater suspension of disbelief than the chatty ghosts. I’m not a fan of convenient coincidences but, in this case, it makes for a good story.
Themes of forgiveness and redemption permeate the novel’s concluding chapters, but the need to face the consequences of one’s choices is the book’s strongest theme. After a slow start (frankly, I think the novel would have been better without the ghosts), Hite won me over with her appealing story and memorable characters.
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