**A Conversation with Silas House: Exploring the Appalachian Trilogy**

As I sat down to research and discuss Silas House's trilogy, "The Book of Lost Things," "Parchment of Leaves," and "The Cold Tattoo," I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and curiosity. It was clear that Silas House is a masterful storyteller who has spent years honing his craft, and it shows in every detail of this trilogy.

One thing that struck me about Silas House's writing style is the way he balances out complex themes and ideas with beautiful nature writing. In all three books, he tackles difficult subjects such as Appalachian culture, family dynamics, and social justice, but he does so with a sense of nuance and sensitivity that makes them feel both authentic and accessible. Whether he's exploring the complexities of rural life or delving into the world of traditional Appalachian music and culture, Silas House is able to convey his passion for the subject matter in a way that feels deeply personal.

Growing up in Appalachia himself, Silas House brings a level of authenticity to his writing that is hard to find elsewhere. He draws on his own experiences as a child growing up in the region, when he would often visit churches and hear the traveling unit bands sing together. These experiences inform much of his writing, particularly in "The Cold Tattoo," where he explores the complexities of contemporary Appalachian culture through the story of Clay, a young woman who becomes embroiled in a difficult family drama.

One of the things that I found most striking about Silas House's trilogy is the way it balances out different characters and perspectives. In each book, there are multiple storylines and narrative threads that intersect and overlap, creating a rich and complex tapestry that rewards close attention. Whether he's exploring the world of traditional Appalachian music or delving into the complexities of family dynamics, Silas House is able to create a sense of depth and nuance that feels both authentic and deeply human.

As someone who has spent time exploring different cultures and traditions, I was particularly struck by the way that Silas House captures the essence of Appalachian culture in his writing. For many people, especially those from outside the region, Appalachia is often portrayed as a place of poverty and hardship, but for Silas House, it's clear that this is a deeply vibrant and beautiful place. From the stunning natural landscapes to the rich musical traditions, Appalachia is a place that feels both familiar and exotic, and Silas House does an incredible job of conveying its unique spirit in his writing.

As I read through the trilogy, I found myself drawn into Silas House's world again and again. Whether he's exploring the complexities of family dynamics or delving into the world of traditional Appalachian music, there's a sense of depth and nuance that feels both authentic and deeply human. For readers who love character-driven novels, stories about place, or simply great storytelling in general, I would highly recommend checking out Silas House's trilogy.

**A Personal Connection to the Trilogy**

For me, one of the most compelling aspects of Silas House's trilogy is its ability to capture a sense of place and culture that feels deeply personal. As someone who has grown up in both Appalachia and California, I found myself drawn into the world of the trilogy in ways that felt both authentic and deeply relatable. From the way he captures the complexities of rural life to his exploration of traditional Appalachian music, Silas House does an incredible job of conveying the unique spirit of this region.

One of the things that struck me most about the trilogy was its ability to balance out different characters and perspectives. As someone who has experienced both the joys and challenges of growing up in a cultural melting pot, I appreciated how Silas House captures the complexities of identity and community in his writing. Whether he's exploring the world of traditional Appalachian music or delving into the complexities of family dynamics, there's a sense of depth and nuance that feels both authentic and deeply human.

For readers who are looking for a story about place, culture, or simply great storytelling, I would highly recommend Silas House's trilogy. Whether you're from Appalachia itself or not, there's something about this series that feels deeply personal and relatable, and it's clear that Silas House has spent years honing his craft to create a world that feels both authentic and utterly captivating.

**A Wish List of Books**

If I could write one book, I think it would be the next installment in Silas House's trilogy. As someone who is deeply invested in the world he created, I would love to see more of Clay's daughter as she navigates her own experiences growing up in Appalachia. There are so many different themes and ideas that Silas House could explore, from the complexities of contemporary Appalachian culture to the power of family and community in shaping our lives.

For readers who have been following Silas House's work, it's clear that he has a deep love for this world and its characters. As someone who has spent years exploring different cultures and traditions, I can attest to the power of storytelling to capture the essence of place and culture in ways that feel both authentic and deeply human.

Whether you're from Appalachia itself or simply looking for a great story about place, culture, or community, Silas House's trilogy is an absolute must-read. With its beautiful writing, complex characters, and nuanced exploration of the complexities of Appalachian culture, it's clear that this series will continue to captivate readers for years to come.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello i'm kendra winchester welcome back to my channel today i am going to be reviewing silas house's appalachian trilogy uh so this is episode number four in my appalachian lit series and so each episode i take three books and i talk about them oftentimes i pair books together that i think are very different or unique etc but today i'm going to do the entire trilogy in a single video many thanks to blair publishing for sending me these new editions these editions have new covers and new introductions and there's some extra authors notes and things in the back they're gorgeous so now these books were written actually in the order of clay's quilt parchment of leaves and then the cold tattoo but i'm going to be reviewing them in the order i read them which is actually in the story's chronological order and so i'll talk a little bit more about that as they go to each book and i feel like with these books silas house is kind of competing with himself at this point in a way that you know he wrote clay's quilt was his debut and each book i think he learns something new and his writing um becomes more polished and he just gets better and better as the books go along which is really interesting to see so i'll point some of the things that i've noticed that i think that he kind of works out and polishes over the course of the three novels and i'll tell you why my favorite is my favorite when i get there all right so the first book is parchment of lee's where we follow a young cherokee woman named vine now in the author's note silas house notes that he is not an indigenous person um but i think his great grandmother or i forget what particular ancestor was a cherokee person and had applied to be a member of the eastern grand cherokee nation and all sorts of different things and so this was kind of way for him to honor that ancestor i think that this book if he were to write something like this now i don't think he would write it per se um but i think he's done a great job also to champion authors from the eastern band cherokee nation as well like and it's in a clap saddle so it's very interesting to see this book which is like 20 years old at this point almost so um i think it's important to read it in the context of the time because the nets in the clap saddles book even as we breathe that came out like last month is the first novel by an enrolled member of the eastern ban cherokee nation so there's your historical context of that culture aspect of this novel so i think that's important to check out as well but one of the big themes of this book is the loss of that culture because a lot of the eastern band had to assimilate um for survival and there was a loss of culture there and that's something that vine experiences uh herself and so she does end up marrying a white man at the beginning of this book and she moves to his family's hauler and gets to know his mother there and there really isn't much of a plot to this book it's more like just her life it's a family story it's a character-driven story there's beautiful descriptions of nature his nature writing is is really just on point and i could see it and i actually called my dad up was from eastern kentucky and i was like dad where did you grow up now where is this place what are the highways so i started like going through like the different um key places in eastern kentucky and he's actually from a place a little more east of um where this book is set so i just found all of that really fascinating and i really enjoyed following along vine story this is silas house's first historical fiction novel and i think he you know does a great job of creating that mood you have to try to like get the reader into the mood of that era and i think he does a great job with that and vine is a very interesting character but i think her best friend is actually my she is my favorite because mine is very quiet and sometimes in her characterization i felt she was so quiet she wasn't quite as well-rounded as i would have liked to see in certain spots of the novel well in other parts of the novel she is just fully vibrant and she confronts this guy in the street i guess he's really racist to her and he happens to be a big powerful man with coal and that comes back in another novel kind of to haunt the family um but it's really interesting to see that uh her story and the way that she works through things um just as a trigger warning this does have a trigger warning for sexual assault um just fyi i don't want to give you any more details because that would be a spoiler for a big part of the book but i know i found that's a very comforting read and i love a good family story it reminded me of the 100 years trilogy by jane smiley and how you get to know these people and their connections to each other and that was a big part of this and i think this is a great start and so i really enjoyed getting to meet the family and then we actually jumped to the granddaughters of fine and her best friend vines daughter and the best friend's son get married it's not a surprise there's like a family tree in the front of all of the books and so we meet um the next set of characters that we're gonna look at in this family and that's easter and anna now easter is a very buttoned up prim sister she kind of had to start raising anna a little early their parents died young and so they were raised by their grandmothers and so it was just a interesting experience now the cold tattoo and whispy me easter and annath this is the last book in the trilogy that he wrote but this is the second book chronologically this is my favorite because he captures this beautiful moment in the very beginning of the book where anthony's dancing and like he talks a lot about music and all of the books he's very much into music and i know he's written a lot of copy for and music as well as part of you know his work so he knows a lot about music and writing music i would i'm not as familiar with music history or different things like that but i could still follow along pretty easily so you don't have to know all these details but i feel like if you are very much familiar with music that you will find these novels even having a heavy meaning more depth and richness to them but we start with anith in this honky tonk and she's dancing and easter comes and kind of fetches her and that really is the whole like crux of their relationship um easter is very religious and so she is very plugged into her community and the church there and is i believe they're in a um charismatic church pentecostal i do not grow up as pentecostal but there are a lot of parts of this that i deeply related to um the pentecostal church is a little more dramatic than the church that i grew up in are very quiet kind of you know a stiff upper lip kind of church but this church is very vivacious and they speak in tongues and all sorts of things so it was really interesting to see that and there's a lot of connections between a worship and what that looks like and both anith and easter sing and that's something that i found really interesting to see those connections in music and two sisters that are very very different and this is all about like you know the 50s and 60s and different things going on in the same area where the person of lee set up is in fact they live in the same hauler that vine did when she moved in with her husband so all those connections are really great to see but one of the things i loved most about this book are the is is the characterization of easter and annath there's so many great things about this book one thing i love the most probably is the characterization of easter and anith i think any kinks that silas house ran into writing his first uh female protagonist in vine he kind of he worked them out in anna and easter and i know he'd already written parts of them for the last book and then he was going back to like flesh out their character so he knew them pretty well at that point but i really appreciate seeing that and they're very consistent throughout the book annette goes through several marriages and just the tumultuous nature of that and how you know her and her sister are just so different but it's really interesting because in many ways they reflect uh their grandmother's vine and her best friend and it's just really interesting to see that process over time and to follow along this book and what happens with it and yeah it was really interesting to see them and i think they're just beautifully beautifully written and there's some great passages nature writing it kind of also sets the mood for the 60s and and the i'm assuming i just go into the 70s i'm not sure but like the whole decade like it just really captures that historical fiction setting which is again different from vine historical fiction setting so it's a new challenge which i think that his house really rose to the occasion for that um the last book in the trilogy but the first one that he actually wrote is his debut clay's quilt and this looks at contemporary appalachia at the time this came out i think in 2001 i think originally and so i was 11. yeah i was 11 when this came out so it's no longer contemporary appalachia but it captures a type of like my dad's appalachia and that was really interesting to see we still have easter who is a big figure in clay's life and um i'm trying to dance around spoilers but how do you talk about this book without giving spoilers for uh the previous book the cold tattoo but this is really clay trying to figure out his place in life in appalachia and him just finding home for himself finding a place for himself within this family unit that he has been in and what that looks like and i've watched a lot of older interviews with silas house to research this trilogy and it was really interesting to hear him really emphasize at these old interviews i think he was about to publish the cold tattoo i think the piece i was watching parchment of leaves had recently come out um i can't remember exactly the time period but you know south was a mail carrier and he grew up in appalachia and you know he really wanted to do his community justice one of the things that i think is great in this book is that he doesn't romanticize appalachia there's a lot of beautiful nature writing in all of these books but all of them face really difficult times because of certain parts of appalachian culture that aren't great and so that is something that he looks at as well and so clay's experience where he meets this amazing woman who has just left an abusive relationship with um her husband and what is fascinating is that she is from this traveling uh religious family they were a group of family who sang together the unit and they would travel around different churches and i grew up with tons of those kinds of families coming to my church and i was like oh i've met these people and so it really made sense to me and how religion plays out in the book is really interesting as well because each character has their own take on it and their own relationship to the church and so that is something that is really fascinating to me as well there are small parts of appalachian culture that to me just made sense and then i would talk to my husband who's from california uh suburbia boy and he was very confused like a certain part of potlucks that you always bring something over as a gift if you go like a hostess gift and like all these random different things that i thought were just part of everyday culture were something that i realized that not everyone experienced and that's something that i really related to with this book so for the trilogy as a whole um i really enjoyed being with this family for almost 100 years and seeing silas house's writing progress from his debut which is a great debut but of course it's going to be a little clunky all debuts are and how he grows as a writer and you see that characterization start to flesh out so by the time you get to the cold tattoo he has been with this family for years and he knows eastern anth really well and so i think that was a great way for him to round out the trilogy the cold tattoo is my favorite i think it was one of the most fascinating reads of the trilogy just because i love easter and ana as characters and when you have a character driven series like that's going to be really important and i really love what he did with contemporary appalachia with clay's quilt i really want a fourth book and i know that that is entirely 100 selfish but i want to see clay's daughter and how her experience is with growing up there and what about out migration like is that going to be covered like there's so many different things and now that silas house is you know 20 years older his kids are grown and like all this stuff um i would love to see more of that so enough about my wish list of books i wish to be written i really think that cytotox does really well balancing out so many different things and it's really interesting having read southern most first to see how his writing has grown from even this trilogy but if these are his first three novels and there's such great characterization and a capturing of culture there's just something beautiful with that there's something beautiful that i think that oftentimes when i read about other cultures which i want to do to learn more about other cultures but when i do i'm kind of everything is new to me i don't really see myself in those books which i don't have to but i also at some point do want to read books where i can see myself and my culture and that's something and very important especially for appalachian people who have left like me those of us who have been part about migration we want to be able to return home somehow and this book is like a little window where we can see what's going on sort of like the bee smearer when belle's like show me my father and you know she can see him and all that stuff i feel like these are my mirror or my window back home where i can see what's going on and kind of still be part of that culture even if i'm no longer physically there and that's something incredibly important and definitely go check out this trilogy if you're looking if you love a family saga like i do if you love character driven novels if you love uh novels based on place then definitely go check out the appalachian trilogy by silas house but yeah that's it from me um i will see you in the next one bye guys youhello i'm kendra winchester welcome back to my channel today i am going to be reviewing silas house's appalachian trilogy uh so this is episode number four in my appalachian lit series and so each episode i take three books and i talk about them oftentimes i pair books together that i think are very different or unique etc but today i'm going to do the entire trilogy in a single video many thanks to blair publishing for sending me these new editions these editions have new covers and new introductions and there's some extra authors notes and things in the back they're gorgeous so now these books were written actually in the order of clay's quilt parchment of leaves and then the cold tattoo but i'm going to be reviewing them in the order i read them which is actually in the story's chronological order and so i'll talk a little bit more about that as they go to each book and i feel like with these books silas house is kind of competing with himself at this point in a way that you know he wrote clay's quilt was his debut and each book i think he learns something new and his writing um becomes more polished and he just gets better and better as the books go along which is really interesting to see so i'll point some of the things that i've noticed that i think that he kind of works out and polishes over the course of the three novels and i'll tell you why my favorite is my favorite when i get there all right so the first book is parchment of lee's where we follow a young cherokee woman named vine now in the author's note silas house notes that he is not an indigenous person um but i think his great grandmother or i forget what particular ancestor was a cherokee person and had applied to be a member of the eastern grand cherokee nation and all sorts of different things and so this was kind of way for him to honor that ancestor i think that this book if he were to write something like this now i don't think he would write it per se um but i think he's done a great job also to champion authors from the eastern band cherokee nation as well like and it's in a clap saddle so it's very interesting to see this book which is like 20 years old at this point almost so um i think it's important to read it in the context of the time because the nets in the clap saddles book even as we breathe that came out like last month is the first novel by an enrolled member of the eastern ban cherokee nation so there's your historical context of that culture aspect of this novel so i think that's important to check out as well but one of the big themes of this book is the loss of that culture because a lot of the eastern band had to assimilate um for survival and there was a loss of culture there and that's something that vine experiences uh herself and so she does end up marrying a white man at the beginning of this book and she moves to his family's hauler and gets to know his mother there and there really isn't much of a plot to this book it's more like just her life it's a family story it's a character-driven story there's beautiful descriptions of nature his nature writing is is really just on point and i could see it and i actually called my dad up was from eastern kentucky and i was like dad where did you grow up now where is this place what are the highways so i started like going through like the different um key places in eastern kentucky and he's actually from a place a little more east of um where this book is set so i just found all of that really fascinating and i really enjoyed following along vine story this is silas house's first historical fiction novel and i think he you know does a great job of creating that mood you have to try to like get the reader into the mood of that era and i think he does a great job with that and vine is a very interesting character but i think her best friend is actually my she is my favorite because mine is very quiet and sometimes in her characterization i felt she was so quiet she wasn't quite as well-rounded as i would have liked to see in certain spots of the novel well in other parts of the novel she is just fully vibrant and she confronts this guy in the street i guess he's really racist to her and he happens to be a big powerful man with coal and that comes back in another novel kind of to haunt the family um but it's really interesting to see that uh her story and the way that she works through things um just as a trigger warning this does have a trigger warning for sexual assault um just fyi i don't want to give you any more details because that would be a spoiler for a big part of the book but i know i found that's a very comforting read and i love a good family story it reminded me of the 100 years trilogy by jane smiley and how you get to know these people and their connections to each other and that was a big part of this and i think this is a great start and so i really enjoyed getting to meet the family and then we actually jumped to the granddaughters of fine and her best friend vines daughter and the best friend's son get married it's not a surprise there's like a family tree in the front of all of the books and so we meet um the next set of characters that we're gonna look at in this family and that's easter and anna now easter is a very buttoned up prim sister she kind of had to start raising anna a little early their parents died young and so they were raised by their grandmothers and so it was just a interesting experience now the cold tattoo and whispy me easter and annath this is the last book in the trilogy that he wrote but this is the second book chronologically this is my favorite because he captures this beautiful moment in the very beginning of the book where anthony's dancing and like he talks a lot about music and all of the books he's very much into music and i know he's written a lot of copy for and music as well as part of you know his work so he knows a lot about music and writing music i would i'm not as familiar with music history or different things like that but i could still follow along pretty easily so you don't have to know all these details but i feel like if you are very much familiar with music that you will find these novels even having a heavy meaning more depth and richness to them but we start with anith in this honky tonk and she's dancing and easter comes and kind of fetches her and that really is the whole like crux of their relationship um easter is very religious and so she is very plugged into her community and the church there and is i believe they're in a um charismatic church pentecostal i do not grow up as pentecostal but there are a lot of parts of this that i deeply related to um the pentecostal church is a little more dramatic than the church that i grew up in are very quiet kind of you know a stiff upper lip kind of church but this church is very vivacious and they speak in tongues and all sorts of things so it was really interesting to see that and there's a lot of connections between a worship and what that looks like and both anith and easter sing and that's something that i found really interesting to see those connections in music and two sisters that are very very different and this is all about like you know the 50s and 60s and different things going on in the same area where the person of lee set up is in fact they live in the same hauler that vine did when she moved in with her husband so all those connections are really great to see but one of the things i loved most about this book are the is is the characterization of easter and annath there's so many great things about this book one thing i love the most probably is the characterization of easter and anith i think any kinks that silas house ran into writing his first uh female protagonist in vine he kind of he worked them out in anna and easter and i know he'd already written parts of them for the last book and then he was going back to like flesh out their character so he knew them pretty well at that point but i really appreciate seeing that and they're very consistent throughout the book annette goes through several marriages and just the tumultuous nature of that and how you know her and her sister are just so different but it's really interesting because in many ways they reflect uh their grandmother's vine and her best friend and it's just really interesting to see that process over time and to follow along this book and what happens with it and yeah it was really interesting to see them and i think they're just beautifully beautifully written and there's some great passages nature writing it kind of also sets the mood for the 60s and and the i'm assuming i just go into the 70s i'm not sure but like the whole decade like it just really captures that historical fiction setting which is again different from vine historical fiction setting so it's a new challenge which i think that his house really rose to the occasion for that um the last book in the trilogy but the first one that he actually wrote is his debut clay's quilt and this looks at contemporary appalachia at the time this came out i think in 2001 i think originally and so i was 11. yeah i was 11 when this came out so it's no longer contemporary appalachia but it captures a type of like my dad's appalachia and that was really interesting to see we still have easter who is a big figure in clay's life and um i'm trying to dance around spoilers but how do you talk about this book without giving spoilers for uh the previous book the cold tattoo but this is really clay trying to figure out his place in life in appalachia and him just finding home for himself finding a place for himself within this family unit that he has been in and what that looks like and i've watched a lot of older interviews with silas house to research this trilogy and it was really interesting to hear him really emphasize at these old interviews i think he was about to publish the cold tattoo i think the piece i was watching parchment of leaves had recently come out um i can't remember exactly the time period but you know south was a mail carrier and he grew up in appalachia and you know he really wanted to do his community justice one of the things that i think is great in this book is that he doesn't romanticize appalachia there's a lot of beautiful nature writing in all of these books but all of them face really difficult times because of certain parts of appalachian culture that aren't great and so that is something that he looks at as well and so clay's experience where he meets this amazing woman who has just left an abusive relationship with um her husband and what is fascinating is that she is from this traveling uh religious family they were a group of family who sang together the unit and they would travel around different churches and i grew up with tons of those kinds of families coming to my church and i was like oh i've met these people and so it really made sense to me and how religion plays out in the book is really interesting as well because each character has their own take on it and their own relationship to the church and so that is something that is really fascinating to me as well there are small parts of appalachian culture that to me just made sense and then i would talk to my husband who's from california uh suburbia boy and he was very confused like a certain part of potlucks that you always bring something over as a gift if you go like a hostess gift and like all these random different things that i thought were just part of everyday culture were something that i realized that not everyone experienced and that's something that i really related to with this book so for the trilogy as a whole um i really enjoyed being with this family for almost 100 years and seeing silas house's writing progress from his debut which is a great debut but of course it's going to be a little clunky all debuts are and how he grows as a writer and you see that characterization start to flesh out so by the time you get to the cold tattoo he has been with this family for years and he knows eastern anth really well and so i think that was a great way for him to round out the trilogy the cold tattoo is my favorite i think it was one of the most fascinating reads of the trilogy just because i love easter and ana as characters and when you have a character driven series like that's going to be really important and i really love what he did with contemporary appalachia with clay's quilt i really want a fourth book and i know that that is entirely 100 selfish but i want to see clay's daughter and how her experience is with growing up there and what about out migration like is that going to be covered like there's so many different things and now that silas house is you know 20 years older his kids are grown and like all this stuff um i would love to see more of that so enough about my wish list of books i wish to be written i really think that cytotox does really well balancing out so many different things and it's really interesting having read southern most first to see how his writing has grown from even this trilogy but if these are his first three novels and there's such great characterization and a capturing of culture there's just something beautiful with that there's something beautiful that i think that oftentimes when i read about other cultures which i want to do to learn more about other cultures but when i do i'm kind of everything is new to me i don't really see myself in those books which i don't have to but i also at some point do want to read books where i can see myself and my culture and that's something and very important especially for appalachian people who have left like me those of us who have been part about migration we want to be able to return home somehow and this book is like a little window where we can see what's going on sort of like the bee smearer when belle's like show me my father and you know she can see him and all that stuff i feel like these are my mirror or my window back home where i can see what's going on and kind of still be part of that culture even if i'm no longer physically there and that's something incredibly important and definitely go check out this trilogy if you're looking if you love a family saga like i do if you love character driven novels if you love uh novels based on place then definitely go check out the appalachian trilogy by silas house but yeah that's it from me um i will see you in the next one bye guys you\n"