Out of the Black Patch: The Autobiography of Effie Marquess Carmack, Folk Musician, Artist, and Writer.

Out of the Black Patch: The Autobiography of Effie Marquess Carmack, Folk Musician, Artist, and Writer. Edited by Noel A. Carmack and Karen Lynn Davidson. Life Writings of Frontier Women, Vol. 4. (Logan: Utah State University Press, c. 1999. Pp. xviii, 398. $29.95, ISBN 0-87421-279-0.)

Effie Marquess Carmack (1885-1974) patterned her memoirs on the pioneer story of settling a frontier, struggling against adversity, and surviving. She noted of the log dog-trot cabin she lived in during her childhood in the western Kentucky tobacco region called the Black Patch, for example, that "it was the same type of dwelling the pioneers built when they landed in America" (p. 33). Carmack wrote in vivid detail about farm life at the turn of the century. She described the never-ending labor of the men, women, and children as they planted, topped, and wormed tobacco, tended chickens, killed hogs, sewed, cooked, and made soap. Noel A. Carmack and Karen Lynn Davidson skillfully edited this autobiography based on the mimeograph provided by Elder John Carmack, Effie's grandson and the managing director of the Historical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).

Carmack noted that "we were used to financial calamities. Often, when [farmers] had worked all year, and made a good crop of tobacco, they got nothing for it when selling time came" (p. 55). That was true during the early 1900s when James B. Duke's American Tobacco Company, a trust controlling the tobacco market, manipulated prices. Planters responded by organizing and night riding. Carmack does not mention the strife, although she lived in an area of intense unrest. When she was eleven the family converted to the LDS Church. They had always read the Bible and observed the Sabbath, she recalled, but not until two young Mormons came preaching did the family find a religion that fit their needs and allowed them to enjoy music and dancing, activities that brought them joy. The conversion year was one of the best in Carmack's life, but tragedy soon followed with the death of her mother and sister.

Her father remarried and moved the family to Arizona. Carmack loved the West, a land of brown, red, and gold, and cut through by washes and canyons that appealed to her artistic side, but her father did not. They returned east where she married Edgar Carmack, reared their children, witnessed the death of a son who was burned in a grassfire, taught Sunday school, painted, sang, and worked. The ability to accept and find pleasure in work defined her life. She proudly claimed that "I have worked ever since I was old enough and I didn't mind it" (p. 341). Carmack's was a life of labor, love, and endurance. Her book will appeal to a general audience, folklorists, and historians of women, the South, religion, and agriculture.

"Well Boys," May Jordan (1889-1914) wrote in her first diary entry in December 1912, "I am going to give you my experiences on buying furs through Alabama And my Adventures with animals And the history of the country ..." (p. 35). What follows is a detailed, humorous account of the winter-long hide and fur trading journeys she made with her father, Eugene Clifford Jordan, in Washington County, Alabama, in the far southwestern part of the state. Elisa Moore Baldwin recognized the value of this unique document and has edited it with skill. The result of her efforts, Where the Wild Animals is Plentiful, gives historians of the South, Alabama, women, society, and the environment a glimpse of the workings of and one young woman's perspective on both the fur economy and common folk lives.

Jordan must have written to alleviate her loneliness and to combat the monotony of the repetitive circuits through the county. Yet she found pleasure and beauty in her travels and in the countryside through which they passed. She was grateful for simple things like lighter wood to start campfires on cold mornings, the stunning sunsets at the end of a long day, friends she met on the trips, her family, and the dog who kept her company while she guarded the wagon when her father walked to isolated homesteads in search of animal pelts. Despite the nuisance of bad roads, getting lost, and the cold and rain, Jordan saw the positive side of the work that supplemented the family income each year.

Their work included hunting, something she greatly enjoyed, as well as processing the hides, sewing burlap bags for shipping, and making camp while they traveled. Local folks trapped or hunted badger, otter, beaver, deer, opossum, civet cat, lynx, bear, mink, and raccoon in the swamps and woods of southern Alabama. Jordan noticed the effects the killing had on the wildlife. She noted in November 1913 that "[since] we went to buying furs we have been the cause of lots of deaths among the animals" (p. 111). Jordan was amazed any creatures were left at all and seemed concerned about the loss: she wrote several little animal tales describing what the beasts might do to their human enemies if they could. The fur trade nevertheless was a crucial part of their rural household economy; Jordan enjoyed the hard work required and reveled in their successes.

Although the diary covers only two years, it gives an abundance of information in a short space, including local history and folklore, ethnic jokes, views of poor people's lives, natural resources, and southern frontier life. The editor provided excellent photographs of people and places associated with the diary and its author. This is an uncommon work by a young woman member of that group that left the least behind for historians to study, the southern plain folk.

SUZANNE MARSHALL Jacksonville State University