Publication details:
Published October 1, 2001 by Penguin Books
ISBN: 9780141002064 (ISBN10: 0141002069)
ASIN: 0141002069
For many years,
I taught American fiction, and I believed I was knowledgeable about
American history and literature. Yet, during the 2007 USIEF Study of
Institutions (SOI) program at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, I
encountered Josephine Humphreys’ Nowhere Else on Earth for the first
time. The book surprised me with its story of a marginalized
community. Initially, I disliked the narrative, as I struggled to
understand the settlement, the region, and the Lumbee life. Still, I trudged
along, determined to finish the book, especially since it was
autographed by the author and included in the program’s recommended
reading. At the time, our SOI course demanded constant travel, lectures,
and an overwhelming amount of reading, leaving little time to reflect on the
book.
Recently, while
revisiting my bookshelves to read, I was piqued by Humphreys’ novel. The second
reading was entirely different. The book had lost its sheen and color due
to the Pondicherry weather, and still, I thought it was appropriate given
the forgotten history it evoked. The story opened to me in a new way and
fascinated me with the outlawed hero, Henry Lowrie. The women protagonists, Cee
and her daughter Rhoda, captured my mind. While my thoughts were anchored
in the realities of women in India, the novel opened before me the fraught,
often overlooked lives of women in a distant corner of America. The novel,
though set in America, foregrounds the Lumbee community and brings to light a
Civil War narrative far removed from the familiar themes of abolition and
slavery. Here patriotism takes on a different, more complicated shape.
Henry Lowrie, a
rebellious figure with a bounty on his head, is both disturbing and
fascinating. Set in 1864 in the Scuffletown region of North Carolina, the novel
portrays the Lumbee people, a mixed race once dismissed as Mulattos. They were
officially recognized in 1885, and in 1995, the US Congress passed the
Lumbee act acknowledging them as American Indians, though federal
recognition still eluded them.
During the
confederacy, as Rhoda narrates, young Lumbee men were conscripted to
build forts and barriers. The Lowrie boys resisted helping their community form
a group that rebelled against the Confederates’ bonded labor. One of the key
leaders was Henry Lowrie, who married Rhoda Strong. Henry becomes not
only a fierce rebel but also a kind of Robinhood figure and was eventually
outlawed with a bounty. Rhoda weaves together her coming of age with her role
in helping Henry’s escape.
By the time I
completed the book, I found myself thinking again about the courage of
women who not only helped the rebels but also continued to live with
poverty, lost men, and conflicts. The novel ends with Rhoda caring for her
three children, a quiet but powerful testimony of endurance and strength.
Josephine Humphrey's Interview Excerpt
AN INTERVIEW WITH
JOSEPHINE HUMPHREYS
1. How much of the Lumbees' story is based on history and fact? What drew you to the story?
I first learned
about the Lumbees when I was seventeen, riding a train through North Carolina.
A dark-haired girl, just married that morning, boarded the train near Lumberton
and took the seat next to me. Still in the white sundress and jacket she'd worn
for her wedding, she was the most beautiful human being I'd ever seen. Her new
husband was sitting at the other end of the car, she explained, because they
were having their first argument: she feared his parents would not approve of
their marriage because he was white and she was not. "What are you?"
I blurted, and her answer only further bewildered me, because I had never heard
of the Lumbees. She enlightened me. For the next hour she told me about her
people, and about the central figures in their history, Rhoda Strong and Henry
Berry Lowrie. And I was hooked. I promised myself that one day I would write
about Henry and Rhoda, but I had no idea that the story would resonate deep in
my heart for years, changing my life. I didn't start writing until I was thirty-three,
and even then I wrote other novels first, unsure how best to tell Rhoda's
story. When at last I worked up my courage, I decided to ground each
scene and character in historical fact whenever possible, and then build
the fiction with additional imagined details and dialogue. All but a handful of
the characters retain their real names.
You can read the complete interview here:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/332661/nowhere-else-on-earth-by-josephine-humphreys/readers-guide/
Opening Lines of the Novel:
I begin with an afternoon in the summer of 1864, a season of bad heat and rain. War raged somewhere and probably love too, but I was safe from both, I thought. I didn't know they were sneaking up to storm me by surprise and wreck me. There had been signs-mud snakes in the well, thunderbolts cracking our nights like warning shots-but I was fifteen. I read things wrong.
We had spent the morning sweltering behind a barred door, with daylight only through chinks and our one high window in the gable. The Home Guard was on a tear again, so Cee wouldn't let us out. She was the kind of mother who might sometimes risk her own neck but never ours.
I was sick with the heat and confinement. After six hours of it I broke.
"I can't breathe!"
"Lie down by the cat hole," she said.
So I got some air there, with my nose next to the little cutout square at the bottom of the door, hoping Cee would say, You poor thing, which she didn't. Under the floor our gold dog, Girl, snuffled and whined, scratching out a hollow to lie in. Through the cracks I could smell the turpentine we rubbed on her for fleas and yellow flies, and probably she could smell me, I was so sweaty. Whispering down to her, "Poor thing, poor you," I spied out the cat hole, but all I saw was a patch of the ordinary world.
“Scuffletown as a place was anchored but driftable and as an idea it had the
floating nature of a dream. In either form it was hard for strangers to reach.”
