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“I remember everything” is the mantra of Molly Petree, the protagonist of Lee Smith’s latest novel, On Agate Hill. She says it with a mixture of pride and resignation. Memory is both her gift and her curse. Most of what she has to recall is decidedly unhappy. From the moment she introduces herself in the pages of her diary—on May 20, 1872—13-year-old Molly begins cataloging her bereavements. Her parents and siblings have all, in one way or another, been wiped out by the Civil War. So has her childhood home. Her beloved aunt has died in childbirth. She is left, a “ghost girl” as she calls herself, to grow up in her uncle’s crumbling North Carolina plantation house, where life is chaotic and she is largely left alone to comfort herself with fantasies of escape. “I am like the ruby-throated hummingbird that comes again and again to Fannies red rosebush but lights down never for good and all, always flying on.”
But Molly finds an identity in her litany of loss. As witness and chronicler of the decline of her once-proud family, she creates, at least within her own mind, a place for herself in a world that seems determined to forget her. Molly belongs to a long literary tradition of girl heroines, from Jane Eyre to Ellen Foster, who are ultimately liberated by hardship. Unfettered by the fear of losing parental love, with no prospect of reward for conformity, the unloved child is free to cast a critical eye on social convention and hypocrisy, to define herself in opposition to them. On Agate Hill follows Molly through a lifetime of passion and disappointment, but she never loses the clear-eyed independence that marked her childhood. She rejects a wealthy benefactor and a rich fiancée, and has the courage to face down a murder charge, because something at her core won’t let her surrender to society’s judgment. As is so often the case with Smith’s female characters, Molly has a cussed instinct, not just for survival, but for authenticity. She must be true to herself.
The story line of On Agate Hill employs all the familiar tropes of orphan-girl-coming-of-age sagas: passionate friendships, encounters with snobbery, lecherous adults, a cruel headmistress, a superficial first love, a true love, a terrible heartbreak and finally a return home. But Smith endows Molly with an explicit sensuality and a powerful imagination that enriches the texture of her story and lifts it beyond cliché. Her restless mind is filled with startling images that give a glimpse into her singular spirit. Even while attending the death of her elderly patron—a man she distrusted and disliked—her poetic sensibility is not blunted. “I lay beside him while all the changes took place, his ravaged body cooling, his thin arm growing stiff across my breast. We are like a sarcophagus, I thought, remembering the Etruscan tombs in Miss Lovinia Newberry’s art class at Gatewood, so long ago. Now we are the sarcophagus itself.”
Unfortunately, after Molly leaves her uncle’s house, On Agate Hill wanders away from the rich immediacy of her voice. Other figures in her life—the hateful schoolmistress, a beloved teacher/friend, her would-be benefactor, and even her brother-in-law—all take over sizable chunks of the story. The diary of Mariah Snow, the schoolmistress, is a particularly vivid character study, giving us a glimpse of the inner torment that must have afflicted many a “respectable” 19th century wife. But it’s frustrating to lose contact with Molly’s inner life during these long passages, especially since they cover periods of great tragedy and transition for her.
The alternative narrators do offer Smith opportunities to make use of some of her vast research. The novel is chock-a-block with little historical details, from housekeeping techniques to the price of hogs, and actually includes a bibliography. The other voices also provide a little distance from the genuinely heartbreaking events of Molly’s later years—perhaps more necessary to Smith, who clearly loves her heroine, than to readers.
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It’s more difficult to understand the presence of the one contemporary voice in On Agate Hill. Each of the book’s major sections is introduced by a character Smith seems to envision as Molly’s modern-day counterpart. Tuscany Miller is a post-adolescent ditz who has come into possession of Molly’s papers because her transgender dad—formerly Wayne, now Ava—and his/her husband purchased the ruin of Agate Hill. They plan to turn it into (what else?) a bed-and-breakfast. Tuscany thinks Molly’s life will make the perfect thesis topic as she seeks to wheedle her way back into a graduate studies program: “I am not going to do ‘Beauty Shop Culture in the South: Big Hair and Community’ after all, despite my background in pageants.”
While the Tuscany interludes are funny, they are much too breezy and Southern-cute to hold their own against the passion and weight of Molly’s story. Their charm seems forced, and they really cast no light on Molly’s character. They have the feel of a writer’s device that may have been necessary to the creative process, but would have been better left behind in editing.
Sad to say, Tuscany gets the last word in On Agate Hill, but that hardly matters. Molly’s singular voice, recounting the last days of her life, is what readers will carry away with them. Smith has a remarkable ability to convey the indomitable quality in the female spirit, especially as it comes to full fruition in feisty old age. As she communes with the memory of a long-lost friend, Molly is the very embodiment of that womanly mix of tenderness, ferocity, wisdom and innocence. “Oh Mary White, don’t you remember how we danced and danced as the storm came on, what did we know then of lightning? Jacky’s gone, one more time, Jacky’s gone. His banjo rings yet in my mind. Oh Mary White, I am glad I gave all my heart I would do it again I will tell all these young girls.”