Annie Laurie and Azalea
Elia Peattie
language
(, March 7, 2010)
This children's book is from 1913. If you choose to read the books in order, look for: - Azalea, the Story of a Girl in the Blue Ridge Mountains (1912) - Azalea's Silver Web (1915) ............................................................................... Excerpt: Chapter I: Two and One Make -- How Many? The long red clay road, winding down from the cabin where the McBirneys lived on their high shelf of Tennyson mountain, was frosted delicately with white, and by the roadside the curious frost flowers lifted their heads, as airy- fine as fern. From the half-hidden cabins all around the semicircle of mountains that skirted the valley of Lee, shafts of smoke arose, showing that the people were about the business of the day. Straight, gray and shadowy these smoke- shafts lifted through the lilac-tinted air; and below in the little town, other shafts of smoke ascended as if in friendly answer. Azalea McBirney, in her dark riding skirt and bright knitted cap and reefer, came running from the cabin with the manner of a girl very much behindhand. "Ain't he there yet, Zalie?" a voice called from the cabin. "Ain't Jim brought them ponies around yet?" "No, mother," Azalea answered over her shoulder, starting toward the stable. "Maybe the ponies have been naughty again. I'll go see." "You just stay where you be," commanded James Stuart McBirney from the stable. "You've got all your work done, ben't you? Well, that's all you have to think about. This here is my job and I mean to do it whatever comes, though these here ponies certainly do act up on a morning like this. "Well, I would just as soon get my breath for a moment," Azalea remarked to nobody in particular, seating herself on the bench by the side of the door." As Hi Kitchell's mother says, *I bin goin' like a streak o' lightnin' since sun-up.' " Her cheeks were, indeed, a trifle over-flushed, and forgetting for a moment how time was has- tening along, and that she and Jim ought already to be on the road to school, she leaned her head against the side of the cabin and looked about her contentedly. She loved the scene before her; loved the pines with their light coating of hoar- frost; loved the waterfall with its gleaming ici- cles; loved the scent of the wood-smoke and the sight of "Molly Cottontail" scampering through the bushes. Chapters: I. Two and One Make — How Many? II. Annie Laurie Pace III. Trial Without Jury IV. A Rainy Night V. The Summers VI. Sunday VII. The Signal VIII. The Mystery IX. The Disbrows X. Sam XI. Marching Orders XII. "The Doll Lady" XIII. The Long Red Road XIV. Hi's Houn' Dog XV. The Voice in the Mist XVI. Good for Evil XVII. Azalea's Party .............................................................................. About the Author: Born in the Gilded Age, Elia W. Peattie stood at the door of the Progressive Era and held it open for a new generation of women who would continue to seek careers, gain universal suffrage for women, promote birth control, and fight vice, filth, corruption, ugliness, ignorance, and exploitation. Her intellectual background, her use of irony and humor, her ability to employ various genres and literary approaches, and her undaunted "impertinence" produced a strong voice on the Great Plains. As a result, she became a vital catalyst for social change and a successful role model for promoting personal and professional independence for women. A loving and beloved mother and wife and a successful journalist, Peattie proved that a woman, if she wanted it, could have it all.** **...summary from plainshumanities.unl.edu