Township by Jamie Lyn Smith

Abstract

Reviewed by: Township by Jamie Lyn Smith Jamie Logan Benner (bio) Jamie Lyn Smith. Township. Cornerstone Press. Jamie Lyn Smith's debut short story collection, Township, renders Appalachian Ohio with an intimacy that fully fleshes out the lives and lore of the region's residents. Smith, born in Ohio, completed her Masters in Education at Fordham [End Page 191] University in New York before returning to the region to earn an MFA from Ohio State University. She has remained in the state ever since, working as an editor and educator. For those acquainted with work from Appalachian writers Ron Rash and Ann Pancake, Smith writes of the familiar—characters with colorful, secretive pasts; sprawling families who shoulder love and loss; churchgoing folk who never quite agree on the good Lord's intentions—but she never circles cliché. Instead, Smith's pages are filled with men, women, and children whose interactions feel both authentic and surprising. She digs into the lives of the outcasts and the injured, leading her characters in search of something greater than themselves. The first of the nine stories "Nature Preserve" depicts four animal lovers who form an unlikely family after bonding over a fawn's rehabilitation. From the start, Smith paints vivid pictures with simple strokes. Ross and Cecil inhabit opposite sides of the social spectrum, but Skye and the young, deeply defensive Billy bring them together. The conclusion holds a special type of heartbreak in its exploration of personal and collective culpability in the wake of a startling death. As characters face the aftermath of their own actions, they discover truths about themselves and those around them. The story sets the tone for those that follow. Smith's landscape contains a personality of its own. Smith combines the beauty of the human desire for connection with an honest look at environmental influence to bare a world rich in particularity. Physical details proliferate in "Home, Grown," a story at the heart of the collection. The protagonist Kalli returns from urban New York to the countryside of Ohio with her partner, who is unfamiliar with the area. "Now there was nothing in that lot but the boarded-up café, the shell of the bar, and a few abandoned rigs, all of it feathered with waist-high foxtail and chicory laced over with kudzu," Smith describes landscape. Although people live in this area, the landscape is largely dominated by the whims of flora and fauna. Nature's push for physical control mirrors the main character's emotions as she seeks to connect with the people she cares for despite disagreement on life's fundamentals. Kalli's return home is a return to a place she can no longer inhabit. For her relatives, meanwhile, the connections shared by those who live together in relative rural isolation form a distinct way of life. This tension complicates their visit. One of Smith's main themes is connection and the emotional barriers that prevent it. For example, Kalli thinks, "She didn't need another reminder of all the ways she'd been found failing … She couldn't stand up under their scrutiny, and no one could stand up under hers. Even herself." Kalli's carefully cultivated pride prevents her from allowing imperfection in herself and others. Ultimately, she must deal with the fact that she is just as complicated, just as problematic, as the family she left behind. Smith is not concerned with objective rights and wrongs. She is concerned with the murkiness of relationships and the personal negotiation of morality. [End Page 192] Incorporating issues of gentrification and reliance on electronics, Smith digs deep into the experience of a community simultaneously invested in and mistrustful of a capitalist system indifferent to their struggle for meaningful connection and even survival. For Kalli, who inhabits a privileged position in the text, inhibition stems not from physical or economic limitations but from expectation and desire for acceptance. Her own mind prevents her from achieving a sense of belonging. Other protagonists fight against personal choices, past and present. A father and camp owner, furious over the disappearance of a client's child, attempts to punch the client in sight of his own son. A recently...