Though James Still says that he did not intend the narrator in River of Earth to be a representation of himself, many connections are found that ring a familiar tone to his life (Boggess 326).  In our selected passage, Alpha Baldridge, the narrator’s mother, mentions that she “lived at Blue Diamond… at Chavies, Tribbey, Butterfly Two, Elkhorn, and Lackey.” She goes on saying that she had “moved to Hardburly twice and to Blackjack beyond counting.” As mentioned in his biography, Still moved at least six different times with his family by the time he was eighteen years old. When Alpha recalls that she had lived in “Hardburly twice,” one can link this to the fact that Still himself lived in the “Carlisle Place,” outside of LaFayette, Alabama, two different times during his childhood (Boggess 328).  

In other texts regarding Appalachia, a transient lifestyle has been presented as a key theme for living in the region. In Arnow’s Dollmaker, Gertie and her family are forced to move out of their quiet home in Appalachia to the bustling streets of Detroit as they follow her husband Clovis to his new job. In Giardina’s Storming Heaven, many of the characters represented in the novel are forced off of their land in one way or another to make way for the bustling coal mining companies. One of that novel’s main characters, Carrie Bishop, finds herself living in a variety of homes, from backwoods cabins to large manors.

Perhaps the most obvious biographical connection to James Still in River of Earth is the fact that the novel is set in Kentucky, the state where Still lived in from 1932 until his death. Only when he moved to Kentucky did still actually encounter the coal mining industry which he presents as a central antagonist in River of Earth. Coal mining, in reference to the selected passage, is the primary reason for why the narrator’s mother in River of Earth had moved to so many different towns. (Mooney)

Other connections found in River of Earth to himself are unmistakable. Still’s father was a veterinarian, and the seven year-old narrator in the novel desires to grow up to be a veterinarian himself. Furthermore, the years of separation between the narrator and his brothers and sisters are identical to the years of separation between James Still and his younger brothers and sisters. Again, Still did not intend River of Earth to be any sort of autobiography, but it seems as if he could not help but to slip some of himself in his writings.

--Steven Long