Book Review: Janice Holt Giles: A Writer's Life, by: Dianne Watkins Stuart

University Press of Kentucky, 1998, 280 pages. Cloth, $25.

Janice Holt Giles, according to Dianne Watkins Stuart in Janice Holt Giles: A Writer's Life, considered herself "a story teller, a rather old-fashioned one." Many creative writers are story tellers. Giles, one of Kentucky's best known writers, lived for 30 years and most of her writing life at Knifley, Kentucky. Because Giles was a meticulous researcher, her fiction and nonfiction works are accurate. Giles recognizes harsh natural surroundings and undesirable people in society, but she focuses on "the positive values of life" and reaffirms her "own faith in the splendor of man." Giles protagonists are optimistic and courageous; they overcome adversity. Stuart suggests that because Giles herself had to overcome many hardships in life, she understood her characters and could write authentically.

Dianne Stuart, who own life reflects courage and optimism and who is a meticulous researcher herself, presents Janice Holt Giles sensitively. Stuart, who has been reading Giles since 1956 and researching Giles' life for several years, feels that Giles' pioneer strength and sense of adventure helped her face and conquer many hardships. Janice Holt Giles: A Writer's Life has quotations from unpublished manuscripts and published works, from letters, and from conversations with people who knew Giles. It also includes a chronology and 33 photographs. When the last word of the biography is read, the reader feels very close to Janice Holt Giles.

Janice Holt Giles' 24 fiction and nonfiction works, all of which were written between 1949 and 1975, are listed in the bibliography. They have been read and reread for pleasure and for information since 1950. The nine novels in The American Frontier Series were published in paperback editions so that schools could buy them and use them in conjunction with American history classes. Stuart pays tribute to Giles as follows:

In her books she portrays regions of the American past with a finely honed precision that preserves their characters forever. She has given the permanence of art to nature and imbued it with goodness, valor and human triumph . . . Janice Holt Giles has surely claimed her "forever and enduring" niche in American literature. Her books are her timeless legacy.

Janice Holt Giles: A Writer's Life is good reading for the general public, for Giles fans, literature buffs, for readers of biography, and for people interested in women authors.

Clara L. Metzmeier is a member of the English faculty at Campbellsville University and President of the Giles Foundation.