Terry Kay - After Eli
Terry Kay has drawn a beautiful and authentic portrait of mountain people threatened by dangerous outside forces. After Eli is a masterfully told story of chilling suspense, great feeling, and impressive power. The scene is a farm in the hills above the remote town of Yale, deep in the Appalachian mountains. The time is the spring of 1939. Eli Pettit has been gone for seven years, and his wife Rachel, her daughter Sarah, and sister Dora are trying to make a go of the farm without him. Suddenly a stranger appears, a wandering Irish actor named Michael O’Rear. Blessed with a poetic gift of gab, and the ability to charm even the most hardened skeptic, Michael soon makes himself indispensable to the Pettit women and to the people of Yale. To Rachel, he even seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to the missing Eli. Yet the reader knows that, before coming to the Pettit farm, Michael has already visited the Nahella Valley and has heard about the money that Eli is supposed to have hidden on the farm.
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