Nowhere Else on Earth

May 03, Denise Westlake rated it really liked it. Apr 20, Vernelle Edwards rated it it was amazing. The intimate dialouge transports one to that faraway time and place. I felt like I could reach out and touch the main character. Jul 01, Vivian Ann rated it it was amazing Shelves: Nov 12, Maria Calipari rated it really liked it. I could not put this book down. To read such a wonderfully recount of what was a living hell for some and a struggle, yet a force of strength and determination for others was mind boggling. A love stronger than many would understand. Not only for a man, but for your roots, your people, your home.

Thank you for bringing me to a swamp where people moved with each other. Was so looking forward to reading it but it was slow and hard to follow. Nothing in it held my interest and considering I love history and different cultures I was surprised. Oct 28, Kate Vassallo rated it liked it. I really liked this book, and thought the writing was excellent. I also really enjoyed it because it was about Robeson County.

Unfortunately, I found some of the threads of the story hard to follow. Nov 30, Cindy Conlan rated it liked it. Interesting but it was hard to follow at times because I did not understand some of the culture and history behind the warring factions. Nov 26, Susannah rated it really liked it. The heroine is serious but sassy Rhoda Strong, daughter of a Native American and a Scotsman, brought up dirt poor in the swampy, turpentine-producing woods area of Robeson County, North Carolina.

Scuffletown is peopled with Lumbee Indians, whose origins have been obscured, but this is of much less concern to them than it is to the good doctor McCabe, who is something of an amateur anthropologist. Also in the area are Scots plantation owners, freed black slaves, and others of mixed race. Rhoda's parents recognise that their daughter has the brains and ability to be a schoolteacher, so she is exempted from helping at home and goes every day to the McCabe household for lessons.

But, having learnt to read, Rhoda tires of the 'mack' Scottish culture, and dreams instead of love — 'the kind as fierce as fire'. Well, she gets it, and a whole lot more besides. With the onset of the war, Rhoda's Indian brothers and cousins avoid conscription into the Confederate army by becoming outlaws and hiding out in the roadless, notoriously difficult terrain of the swampland.

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Rhoda falls for the elusive ringleader, Henry Lowrie, against her mother's advice that it will end in tragedy. While Scuffletown is not a major arena in the war, everyone's bellies are affected by the interruption of commerce and soldiers raiding the fields and stores.

By Josephine Humphreys

The area is the scene of numerous local battles, friction between the two communities, mack and Indian — or sheriff and outlaw. Henry is increasingly embroiled in this and so Rhoda becomes involved, emerging as a resourceful, resilient survivor of the hardships and slaughter.

Nowhere Else on Earth is meticulously researched, and many of the characters, including Rhoda and Henry, are based on real people. Josephine Humphreys has a knack for the Carolina vernacular, and makes her characters come alive with filmic vividness. She starts out slow, setting the scene expertly with descriptions of life in the backwoods, and builds the story gradually until it grips the reader with a series of intense crises.

The straightforward prose underlines the impact of the traumatic events, which were described so poignantly I was close to tears. The scope of this saga is broad, encapsulating the effects of colonisation, racism, class, poverty, and the different effects of war on women and men, without once lecturing. But is is also a love story, written with warmth, compassion and a penetrating eye on the human condition. I did not realize until I had already finished the book and read the Author's Note at the back that this novel is based on a true story!

Henry Berry Lowrie, the novel's central male character and center of interest, actually lived and did the things described in Ms. Humphreys' book, living as a member of an outlaw gang out of the forests of Robeson County, a kind of Robin Hood to his own people. Nowhere Else on Earth , told from the perspective of Rhoda Strong, his eventual bride, follows the for I did not realize until I had already finished the book and read the Author's Note at the back that this novel is based on a true story! Nowhere Else on Earth , told from the perspective of Rhoda Strong, his eventual bride, follows the fortunes mostly misfortunes of Scuffletown, an unofficial settlement of Lumbee Indians in North Carolina during the Civil War.

As the characters eventually discover, they are probably descendants of a local Indian tribe and the missing English settlers of Roanoke colony whom they took in. Not much is made of this revelation in the story, though there's a feeling that that is proper. Nothing in the lives of the Scuffletowners — their poverty, their Indian origins, etc. In fact, if I had one main criticism, it would be that there is hardly any romance in the book, save in the modern sense.

I felt that the first half could have been dramatically shortened, as the main incidents of the plot do not occur until later on, and when they do come, they pass by too quickly. I think the problem is that the author wanted to write a nonfiction treatment of this intriguing area and its history, in the form of a novel. I did not get the feeling of the lushness and richness of history which I usually get in historical novels that I love.

And much was made of Rhoda's family's experience early on, only for most of these characters to disappear into the background once she marries Henry. Don't get me wrong, the characters especially Henry and their situations and their choices and actions were all very interesting. I just felt that there was a certain something missing. I'd recommend it for lovers of Southern fiction, and for enthusiasts of the Civil War, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it for general reading — though I am glad I read it, and do think it worth the time.

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Apr 27, Kellie rated it did not like it Shelves: This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I did not finish this book. I read as far as maybe page 45 and closed it for good. Characters are dropped into the story and you have no idea who they are or the role they play. The story was choppy. Not to mention, I was never sure what the actual story was about. I know the story is about Rhoda, a young girl with Na I did not finish this book.

I know the story is about Rhoda, a young girl with Native American blood who lives with her family in the south during the Civil War. She spends a lot of time with her family in a house with no windows in the middle of the hot summer. Local boys are being taken for hard labor and some are never seen again. A character named Harris kills two black boys in cold blood and nothing is done about it. Daughter of a Scotsman and his formidable Lumbee wife, Rhoda is fiercely loyal to her family and desperately from amazon: Feb 08, Anton rated it it was amazing.

It's about people I didn't know existed. A tribe I suppose. Poor folks, of Indian and mixed race stock. The voice of the woman narrator is believable and full of a kind of back-woods regional pride that I feel like I understand, in spite of having been brought up within a few hours of Manhattan. Having worked for years on an oral history of a town that is a three hundred year old European settle I loved this book.

Having worked for years on an oral history of a town that is a three hundred year old European settlement, in NY State, I've often felt a sadness at the lost history of the Indian blood that blended in with those mostly English settlers. It is still there, visible and invisible, in the people and the culture, and this novel deepened my sensitivity to it. The story centers on a place in Robeson County called Shuffletown that housed a mixture of Native Americans and their families. The story discusses the turpentine business in North Carolina and the beetles and war that destroyed this business.

The story recounts the terrors and hardships of the war, and shows that the Robeson County inhabitants had to fight off both the Yankees and the Rebels. I felt the story difficult to follow with the multitude of characters. This is not a book that I enjoyed, and do not plan to read other books by this author. And again the Civil War!

But I think it's just a coincidence, or maybe because I was reading from Marien's library. North Carolina again, too. This times it's the people of Scuffletown along the Lumbee river. There's gangsters, outlaws, gunfights, soldiers. It's pretty much chaos.

The Lumbee settlers are a strong-willed bunch, and for the most part they find a way to get through it all. In something of an aside, it's asserted in this book that the Lumbee Indians are actually descended from the lo And again the Civil War! In something of an aside, it's asserted in this book that the Lumbee Indians are actually descended from the lost Roanoke Colony. I've pretty much suspected as much. There's a book, I think "Roanoke", to this effect which I snooped in at the bookstore once. Dec 10, Kathryn Wood rated it really liked it. Reading this book put me entirely in the place and spirit of an unusual and relatively unknown place and people, the Lumbee Indians of inner coastal North Carolina.

It takes place during the Civil War in the mid 's when the Indians were often looked down upon and they felt ill at ease in either the Confederate or Union camps. Told in first person, the young woman who tells the story pulls us into their world and makes us care about it and its inhabitants. Jan 11, Jemma rated it it was ok. I was quite disappointed by this book. In theory I should have loved it - I find the time period it was set in fascinating and also take quite an interest in the southern states, but the characters were so one dimensional that I didn't care about them at all.

The plot had potential, but it was almost as if she didn't know where she was going with it at times. I persevered in the hope that it would get better, but it never did.

Nowhere Else on Earth by Josephine Humphreys | www.newyorkethnicfood.com: Books

Apr 06, Terry rated it liked it Shelves: This novel is set in a backwoods, swampy section of North Carolina during the Civil War. The Lumbee whose ancestors were Native Americans and perhaps the Lost colony of Roanoke are being sent off to do slave labor for the Confederacy, so Henry Berry Lowrie collects a band of young men, who defy the authorities and try to save the community.

Rhoda Strong has the misfortune of loving Henry and that love forces her to make difficult choices. Feb 13, Midnight-heart rated it really liked it. Nowhere else on earth was a very confronting book mainly because it's all about choosing the oath you want and deciding what's best for you in the future.

It touched on subjects such as friendship, love, family and growing up. For one thing, Rhoda actually lived on for many years, more than three decades after Henry was gone.

Naturally she would have spent a great deal of time remembering the dramatic events of her youth and pondering their significance. Wisdom comes with the passage of time. I wanted to discover how she might have understood and interpreted her love and her life. The long look back over time is important to us, too, as we re-examine the American past. Do you see the novel as primarily the story of Scuffletown or of Rhoda? When you began the novel, what elements of the plot did you already have resolved?

I meant to suggest, by means of the title, that Scuffletown is a place unlike any other, with flora, fauna, climate, history, and culture unmatched elsewhere — a unique spot of earth. But I could not have entered this place without Rhoda, the individual and singular woman who inhabited it. Maybe Scuffletown is a place like no other, but at the same time the opposite is true.

It is like all others. One part of the ending was unresolved until the very moment of its writing. Many Lumbees believe that Henry escaped to another state, and some even report that he was sighted several times, coming back to see Rhoda. Others think he accidentally shot himself and was secretly buried by his family in a spot that will never be revealed. I am still sure of it.

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The novel serves as a cautionary tale about segregation and prejudice in the time of the Civil War. If there were no parallels between the past and the present, history would hardly interest us. Indians have significant power in county government, courts, school boards, and law enforcement. The current Miss North Carolina is a Lumbee. Among all Native American groups the Lumbees have the highest percentage of lawyers, doctors, and teachers. But prejudice dies hard, and enmities smolder.

The effects of past injustice and segregation often linger longer than we might suspect. What was different about writing a historical novel? Which did you enjoy writing most? I knew that Nowhere Else on Earth would be unlike my earlier works. For those contemporary novels, I used my own world as backdrop. Research was unnecessary, because of course I was familiar with every aspect of that world and could call it up automatically.

But for the historical novel, I needed to learn another world, and I needed to learn it intimately. Often I decided not to take notes on my research, hoping that the material would simply soak in and then later bubble up as quickly and as easily as if it were my own. Perhaps the most intriguing part of writing this book was, I discovered, the emergence in my mind of a new and different ethics of fiction. How could I create fiction that remained loyal to truth? How much imaginative reconstruction could I do without misrepresenting the dead? I love to get up early in the morning — the earlier the better — and go directly to my office in the Confederate Home, once the refuge of Civil War widows, now a residence for women as well as studio space for writers and artists.

In a different mode, I might write a sentence, look out the window and daydream for several hours, then go home and work in the vegetable garden. I have started two new books, one set in the past and one in the present. Both are waiting, and I will soon have to choose. Historical Romance Military Fiction print. What are you working on now? What is the impact of Dr. Why does Rhoda herself seem unimpressed by Dr. In what ways do the women have to provide for themselves, and at what cost? To Brant Harris and Allen Lowrie?

Throughout the novel, physical hunger and deprivation play a great part in the fortunes of the Scuffletowners. How does it change over the course of the story?