The Smoldering Turves

By Gwyneth Holdin
Reviewed by Cameron Sue Wistencia

    The Smoldering Turves continues the story begun in The Sagging Eaves. The Sagging Eaves was an historical recreation of the lives of the Holdin family, which settled in Liverwich, Maine, nee Massachusetts, in 1783. The Sagging Eaves followed the fortunes of the Holdin family up until1890. The Holdin’s were the only family from the town of Kilmase, Scotland, ever to settle in Liverwich. The Smoldering Turves continues the Holdin family saga backwards in time to the seventeenth century. Kilmase, which had a population of 67 people in the seventeenth century is remarkable mainly for the lack of dramatic events which occurred there. The only unusual event, a brief roof fire which gave the book its name, was swiftly put out by a quick thinking sparrow which Claire Holdin, the daughter of Thomas and Hendy Holdin, had taught how to carry tiny buckets of water.

Thomas Holdin was the Great Grandfather of Stanton Holdin, who left Kilmase to settle in Liverwich after a stampede of rabid, elephant sized tortoises leveled Kilmase in 1783, and left Stanton as the only survivor. The Smoldering Turves follows the lives of Thomas, Hendy and their descendents up until 1782, the year their family cow gave more milk than it had for the previous three years. Gwyneth Holdin’s, the author’s, style is as placid and serene as a typical morning on the Holdin farm. "Thomas walked over to the barn and took care of the cows. He gave them hay and water. As he walked, crunching softly on the farmyard frost, on his way to take care of the chickens, he saw the silhouette of Hendy cast against the kitchen blinds, reassuringly familiar to Thomas. The silhouette was soon gone from view, replaced by the familiar sound and smell of the chicken coop."

Holdin’s, the author’s, genealogical research is meticulous, and though she was unable to research Scottish farming practices, the reader can be sure that the New England farming practices exhibited by Thomas and Hendy are entirely authentic to New England. Thomas Holdin married Hendy Holdin, his cousin, in 1667. Hendy lived on the farm next door. Their eldest daughter Claire, who left Kilmase as a child with a troupe of Ukranian Acrobats, settling on the coast where she later became famous for teaching narwhales to walk on land and serve tea, does not come into the story. All the other Holdin’s, though, do.

The Smoldering Turves does for Kilmase what The Sagging Eaves did for Liverwich. A somnolent family saga, a homage to routine and lack of incident, The Smoldering Turves and the Sagging Eaves are to history what drowning is to swimming, an immersion, a finality, a peacefulness after labor, labor in vain. In vain I say, as anyone familiar with the Liverwich Asteroid, which immolated the town in 1891 after its stupendous impact ignited a raging inferno, will appreciate. No Holdin survived the Liverwich Asteroid other than Gwyneth, who was an infant at the time, but surely their family Saga, beginning in 1667, ending in 1782, beginning again in 1784, and ending in 1890, as captured by the last of the Holdins, will preserve their family legacy for all time.