Nowhere Else on Earth

Rating:
Summary: It's like being there....
Review: As I read the opening pages and started to get Rhoda Strong fixed in my mind, I realized early in the book that all the characters would stick with me through to the end. That is the gift that Josephine Humphreys has for story telling. You inhale and exhale every breath with the characters.

The story of Robeson County, North Carolina and the Lumbee people was opened up in a new light. The Lumbee, a closed subject to the world for countless generations, now are transformed and explained to us: from preferably non-existent in society to real people with real life experiences of happiness, pain, trauma, hardship, and monotony--just like everyone else. The book causes one to look at the heart of those we would rather ignore.

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Summary: Henry Bear
Review: I have heard countless tales about the adventures of HB Lowrie and his brothers, but not until reading Nowhere Else on Earth have I found myself immersed in the little none scenarios that truly make the legend powerful to me on a personal level. In fact, last Sunday afternoon, I took a 2-hour excursion to several landmarks in rural Robeson County where he and Rhoda Strong lived as man and wife until his disappearance in the late 1800s. Reading Humphreys' novel has made me all the more appreciative of my Lumbee heritage.

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Summary: Down and Out in Robeson County
Review: I read this book from first page to last, never able to quite put my finger on its pulse. In 1864 the Civil War raged in its 4th year and the "macks" were separatists with zero tolerance for their neighbors in Scuffletown, who hid their eligible young men in the swamp. The macks (Mac this and Mc That), the Scots planters who were original settlers of the North Carolina land, were in constant opposition with the indiginous people of the land. The landscape of Scuffletown changes like shape-shifters, as these proud Indian descendants move from place to place.

Rhoda Strong, daughter of Cee, tells this rambling tale of good vs. evil. We follow as she makes life-choices and committments that seem irreversible. Basing her decisions on the attitudes of this poverty-riddled family, she seems proud of two questionable virtues: stubborness and ignorance.

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Summary: True to the Tales of the people of Scuffletown
Review: I was eagar to read this book after living amoung the Lumbee Indians for ten years (and marrying one). This book is wonderfully written and carefully researched. I found it to be so true to the way the " Old Timers" in Robeson County tell the tales of Henry Berry Lowrie and his gang. The discriptions of the area and the feelings of the Lumbee come through loud and clear as Humphreys tells the tale through the eyes of Rhoda Strong Lowrie.

Rating:
Summary: No Wasted Words
Review: Josephine Humphreys wrote Nowhere Else on Earth in a trimmed down and concise style of writing suited to a powerful story of sparse times. Her characters are true to history yet fleshed out by Ms. Humphreys' vivid reconstruction. The book inspired me to research Henry Berry Lowrie and the Lumbee Indians, something I knew virtually nothing about. I read in the Atlanta paper that she waited decades to write this book; it was worth the wait.

Rating:
Summary: A moving story of an important period of history
Review: Really enjoyed this peek at a unique time and place in American history. A colorful account of what it was like during the Civil War in North Carolina (now Pembroke, NC). To me, it had more of a mountain flavor than that of an American Indian tale, but I got enough of both sides to enjoy the novel. Why can't textbooks be so wonderfully written and so captivating? I think women especially will enjoy this book and it's great fare for those who love modern fiction as well. A double whammy; a good read and educational as well!

Rating:
Summary: A hero to enrich our story
Review: Review by Jillian Abbott

Nowhere Else On Earth by Josephine Humphreys is an historical novel with equal emphasis on history and fiction.
In terms of history, the book stays close to known facts. But Humphreys doesn't stop there. In inventing a first person memoir, she creates a subjective, indeed, feminine, history. "Mine is only a single and limited testimony, one woman's version. . ."
There is mischief in her narrator, the curious Rhoda Strong. She is game even to examine and question the true nature of history, racial prejudice and scapegoating, all described in such a way as to render today's incidences of ethnic violence comprehensible: ". . . it wasn't an English that sliced him . . . [it was] his own neighbor! . . . We were neighbor against neighbor."
In fictional terms the characters and events are portrayed with grace, subtly, and depth. Gaps in the story are filled by citing period newspapers. Yet there is an irony here as when, after drawing considerably from the press, Rhoda points out the divergence between the life she actually leads and the one portrayed by the media.
But in creating this personal history, Humphreys is again playing with us. What is the line between the personal and the political?
In the Prologue, supposedly written on November 3, 1890, the feisty and wise Rhoda sets out her intentions and hopes for her narrative and outlines her view on the nature of history, stating that nobody will ever be able to render the story of Scuffletown complete and objective, "just as a soldier can never describe a whole battle - only his piece of it . . ."
In choosing the words, "us and our times" to refer to her story, Humphreys is telling us this is a political work, as much about the society that denied the Scuffletown Indians justice, as it is about one particular Indian woman.
Rhoda is a Lowrie by blood and marriage, and "the Lowries are Indians. The whole place is Indian. And that's the answer to who we are."
But is it? Dr. McCabe, a member of the Scottish Confederate overclass, isn't so sure. He studies Rhoda and her people, measures their heads, and invasively probes their origins. By the second half of the book McCabe is sure there is more to the Lowries than anyone suspects.
As the true origin of the Scuffletown Indians dawns on McCabe, the Civil War is almost over. It is a desperate lawless time. To the Scottish Confederates, the source of their defeat, and all that has gone wrong in their lives, is clear. Their demise is not the result of Union soldiers or their own bad ideas; rather, it is the Lowries and Scuffletown who are responsible.
Again Humphreys uses subjective truth to make her point. McTeer, the brutal Deputy Sheriff and a leader of lynch mobs, spells out why the Lowries are guilty, and even how they differ from respectable white folks: "The noble morals is bred out. Your makeup is what they call bestial . . ."
Using simple prose Humphreys evokes the times in hauntingly powerful images. As the Civil War drags towards its end, and as the defensive gang formed by Rhoda's husband, Henry, nearly matches the Confederate whites in brutality, Scuffletown can't even manage to fill its belly. The inhabitants have neither food nor money, which hardly matters because the stores have no food to sell. Desperation pervades: "There was gunfire every night, everywhere, and just about every farmer's watch dog was shot. Some were eaten."
Yet despite the harsh times, Rhoda is a woman with a great capacity for love, and it is her love for Scuffletown and its people that motivates her. After all, for Rhoda, there is, Nowhere Else On Earth.