Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You

Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You begins in a room made cool by the approach of death, where an old woman and her grieving daughter are saying good-bye in silent, urgent conversation. In the next room, Jess Kirkman waits with his father, remembering the tales his grandmother and mother have passed down - an inheritance rich in language and music and imaginative teaching, told by women to a young man who will one day find such wisdom needful. Each tale builds and weaves in a counterplay as intricate as that of fiddle and banjo. Jess recalls "The Fisherwoman," "The Traveling Woman," "The Feistiest Woman," "The Silent Woman," "The Wind Woman," and others, in a range of ghost to detective to comic to love stories. As he tells, he comes to understand the special knowledge of the women and the place that made him: a mountain land where myth becomes history, language makes song, and time seems to pause at a certain point at dusk, when the moon casts deeper shadows than the sun.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.