Introduction
The first-person narration
of 14-year-old protagonist Mary Call Luther of Trial Valley in North
Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains makes Vera and Bill Cleaver's Where
the Lilies Bloom a marvelous Appalachian novel for young people.
The motherless Mary Call
leads her two sisters and brother through the illness and death
of their father, the threat of losing their home, the danger of
being separated, and the misery of an Appalachian winter. She shoulders
the tasks of holding her family together and making sure they are
fed, clothed, and sheltered; keeping her promises to her dying father;
and keeping the secret of his death from the townspeople. The reader
watches her struggle with the reality of her life in contrast to
the unrealistic promises she made to her father.
As the story begins, we are
introduced to the other-worldliness of life in the Appalachian mountains.
Mary Call tells us, “Once in some near-forgotten time a traveler,
winding his way across the mountains on foot, wandered into our
valley which is known as Trial” (9). The “near-forgotten time” might also be a “near-forgotten
place,” where traditional values run head-on into the modern
world.
Plot Summary
Because her 18-year-old sister
Devola is “cloudy headed,” the dying Roy Luther turns
over to 14-year-old Mary Call responsibility for her siblings, Romey,
eleven, and Ima Dean, five, as well as Devola. He makes Mary Call
promise to keep the family together, refuse charity, and keep Devola
from marrying Kiser Pease, the neighbor for whom Roy Luther share-crops.
Mary Call has no problem making these promises, for she shares her
father's devotion to the traditional values of family and pride,
and she hates Kiser Pease, whose greed she blames for all the family's
struggles.
Two bits of fortune buy the
Luther children some time during their father's illness. First,
Kiser Pease's near-fatal illness enables the Luther children to
con him out of the family's house and property; they agree to save
his life in return for a contract giving them the land and house.
Then, Mary Call finds a book on wild-crafting left by her late mother
and uses it to search for medicinal plants in the mountains. She
and her siblings sell the plants to a store owner in town.
After Roy Luther dies, Mary
Call and Romey bury him in the mountains and fend off nosy and well-meaning
neighbors, including Kiser Pease. However, a frigid winter almost
destroys their house, and an accident brings Kiser's sister to Trial
Valley. The sister explains that Kiser never owned the Luther house;
she does. She evicts the Luthers, forcing Mary Call to find a cave
into which to move her family after Kiser rejects her desperate
marriage proposal.
When the Luthers cannot fall
any further, Kiser leaves the hospital, buys the Luther property
from his sister, and returns it to the children. Mary Call begins
to question the wisdom of her late father and eventually allows
Devola to marry Kiser, who arranges to obtain custody of the younger
children, allowing the family to remain together.
Conclusion
The clash of idealistic mountain
traditions and the reality of a world in which children are orphaned
provides a great deal of depth in a story that might at first seem
formulaic: orphaned children suffer, fear discovery, and find salvation
from a kind wealthy person who had appeared to be an enemy. Charles
Dickens mined that plot richly. However, the conflict in Where
the Lilies Bloom is not with the elements and the outside world
alone: Mary Call must overcome not just nature and apparent enemies
but also her own blind loyalty to her misguided father, whose pride
almost condemns his children to a life of suffering.
Discussion
Questions
Plot, Point of View
-
What impressions of the
story do you get by having Mary Call tell it? How would the story
be different if another character told it (Romey, Devola, Kiser
Pease)? How would it be different if the narrator were outside
the story and told about the thoughts of all the characters?
-
Why does Mary Call write
about this part of her life? Most of us don't write about our
lives.
-
In many stories, the hero
is a boy or man. Do you think Mary Call's job would be easier
if she were a boy? Do you think the story would be very different
if she were a boy?
-
Romey is a boy. Why do
you think his father doesn't have him run the family?
-
Mary Call is only fourteen.
She isn't the oldest of the four Luther children. How would the
story be different if Devola weren't “cloudy headed”
or if Mary Call were the oldest?
-
What do the Luther children
think of people in the town? Do you as a reader have the same
opinion of the townspeople? Are Mr. and Mrs. Connell nosy or concerned?
What is the difference between nosiness and concern?
-
If you were Mary Call,
what would you have done differently?
-
Why is the book called “Where the Lilies Bloom”? Explain the book's
title.
Setting
-
What is the importance
of setting this book in the Appalachian mountains? Could the same
situation have happened in New York City? How would the book be
different if it were set in a city?
-
How important is the natural
world in this book?
-
Why does Mary Call want
to know how old the Smoky Mountains are?
-
Why is the place where
the Luthers live call “Trial Valley”?
-
Some people might say
that Old Joshua and Sugar Boy are characters in the book. Do you
agree?
-
Do you think that the
people in this book are like other people who live in the Appalachian
mountains? What experience or other literature helps shape your
opinion? Do you think people in other parts of the United States
are similar to people who live in Appalachia or different from
them?
Characters
- In the Old Testament,
Joshua led the Israelites into Palestine after Moses died. He
won the battle of Jericho to acquire Palestine for his people.
What is the significance of naming the mountain Old Joshua after
him?
- Martin Luther was a man
who wanted to reform the Roman Catholic Church almost 500 years
ago. He started the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther King
was named for him. Do you think there is any significance to the
Luthers' sharing his name?
- “Kiser” is a
word similar to “caesar” and “czar” and means
“ruler.” Does Kiser Pease's name fit him?
- Although the Luther children's
mother, Cosby Luther, has died before the book begins, she is
still important in the story. Explain her role.
- The mother is dead in
many stories and books. (Examples include Mark Twain's The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn, Charles Dickens' David Copperfield and Oliver
Twist, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color
Purple by Alice Walker, J. K Rowling's Harry Potter books,
and many fairy tales such as “Cinderella.") Why do you think so
many storytellers and authors create motherless children? How does the fact that
the Luther children are motherless (and then orphaned completely)
make the reader feel about them?
Interpretation, Symbolism
- Why is Mary Call so afraid
of being ignorant?
- What is the plot significance
of the Luther children's plan to move into a cave? What is the
symbolic significance?
- At the beginning of the
book, a traveler says that he had climbed Old Joshua and Sugar
Boy “for the memory.” Why does Mary Call tell that story?
What is its significance?
Ethical Questions
- Why doesn't Roy Luther
want Devola to marry Kiser Pease? Do you think Roy Luther is right
not to want his daughter to marry Kiser?
- Mary Call tells Devola
that she is being disloyal to her family by liking Kiser Pease.
Is Mary Call right?
- Is Mary Call wrong to
let Devola marry Kiser when their father told her never to let
that marriage take place? Should a child ever disobey a parent's
wishes? Should a person ever go back on a promise? Is a promise
to someone who has died different from a promise to a living person?
- Is Roy Luther wrong to
make Mary Call promise not to take charity? Is it wrong to let
other people help you?
- After Roy Luther dies,
the children tell people he is “just fine” or “sleeping.”
Is it wrong for them to lie? Is lying ever justified?
- Are Mary Call's plans
to marry Kiser Pease to get her father's land back wrong? Is it
wrong to marry someone you don't love?
- In a Greek play
by Sophocles called Antigone (pronounced an-TIG-uh-nee), a young woman's uncle, the king, tells her not to bury
her brother, who was killed in battle. Antigone disobeys her uncle
because she believes there are higher laws than the ones people
make. How is Mary Call like Antigone? Are there some laws that
are higher than the ones made by governments?
Conclusion
- What has Mary Call learned
by the end of the book?
- Do you think the book
has a happy ending?
This page created in 2000 | AppLit Site Index | Top of Page | Last update
8/20/10
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