On Agate Hill

A dusty box discovered in the wreckage of a once prosperous plantation on Agate Hill in North Carolina contains the remnants of an extraordinary life: diaries, letters, poems, songs, newspaper clippings, court records, marbles, rocks, dolls, and bones. It's through these treasured mementos that we meet Molly Petree. Raised in those ruins and orphaned by the Civil War, Molly is a refugee who has no interest in self-pity. When a mysterious benefactor appears out her father's past to rescue her, she never looks back. Spanning half a century, "On Agate Hill" follows Molly s passionate, picaresque journey through love, betrayal, motherhood, a murder trial and back home to Agate Hill under circumstances she never could have imagined."

Review :
"She is nothing less than masterly. . . . Smith brings to [her work] an ear for speech and voice that most other writers can only envy." --"The New York Times Book Review" " She is nothing less than masterly. . . . Smith brings to [her work] an ear for speech and voice that most other writers can only envy." -- "The New York Times Book Review" "On Agate Hill is a masterpiece and may come to be considered a more important novel than even Smith's wonderful Fair and Tender Ladies. . . . Somebody should give a copy of this book to a member of the Nobel committee." --Donald Harrington, The News and Observer "Smith plays with authorial antecedents and literary references from Charlotte Bronte, Faulkner and Milton, and there are echoes of Dickens and Henry James. . . . In On Agate Hill, author Smith is in full command of her talent for strong stories and evocative characters, and her always fine, shining prose is extra-pearly here. . . . Lee Smith has never written a lousy book; she may never have written a lousy sentence. And so, to declare this novel her best yet--well, that's saying something. On Agate Hill is more ambitious than Family Linen and more exquisitely crafted than Oral History. . . . Smith is such a beautiful writer, tough and full of grace, that soon you are lost in the half-light of Molly's haunted landscape, listening to the voices of the ghosts, wishing they'd let you stay longer." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution "An authentic American saga, bittersweet as an Appalachian ballad, peopled with wonderfully vivid characters, so brilliantly constructed we never even notice the quilt-like artfulness of its design. One of those books you can either roam contentedly around in for days, or devour at once, in a rush of pure pleasure." --"Kirkus" "Set among the ashes of the Civil War, Lee Smith's new novel brings a dead world blazingly to life. . . . A book that seeks to rejuvenate the rapt early reader in us all. . . . [Lee Smith] is a subtly intrepid and challenging storyteller." --Washington Post Book World " Set among the ashes of the Civil War, Lee Smith's new novel brings a dead world blazingly to life. . . . A book that seeks to rejuvenate the rapt early reader in us all. . . . [Lee Smith] is a subtly intrepid and challenging storyteller." -- Washington Post Book World " On Agate Hill is a masterpiece and may come to be considered a more important novel than even Smith's wonderful Fair and Tender Ladies. . . . Somebody should give a copy of this book to a member of the Nobel committee." -- Donald Harrington, The News and Observer " Smith plays with authorial antecedents and literary references from Charlotte Bronte, Faulkner and Milton, and there are echoes of Dickens and Henry James. . . . In On Agate Hill, author Smith is in full command of her talent for strong stories and evocative characters, and her always fine, shining prose is extra-pearly here. . . . Lee Smith has never written a lousy book; she may never have written a lousy sentence. And so, to declare this novel her best yet--well, that's saying something. On Agate Hill is more ambitious than Family Linen and more exquisitely crafted than Oral History. . . . Smith is such a beautiful writer, tough and full of grace, that soon you are lost in the half-light of Molly's haunted landscape, listening to the voices of the ghosts, wishing they'd let you stay longer." -- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution " An authentic American saga, bittersweet as an Appalachian ballad, peopled with wonderfully vivid characters, so brilliantly constructed we never even notice the quilt-like artfulness of its design. One of those books you can either roam contentedly around in for days, or devour at once, in a rush of pure pleasure." -- "Kirkus"