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John Spots spotsjohn — On Agate Hill, by Lee Smith is a historical piece that follows the life of the orphaned Molly Petree. The reader first meets Molly in 1872 at the age of 13. She is living in her uncle’s house and has just begun to keep a journal, which is one of the forms that is used to tell her story. In fact, the whole novel is in the form of journal entries, letters and court documents. With the epistolary style, a plot is not always easily identified, as is the case with this book. This style of writing generally leads itself to wonderful character portraits and allows one to gain a fuller knowledge and understanding of one or more characters. As Molly is the main character, all of the journal entries, etc… are either written by her or about her. The story unfolds in four basic stages of Molly’s life. The first stage is Molly’s life on the Agate Hill Plantation, owned by her Uncle Junius. At this point in her life, Molly has lost a lot of people close to her. Both of her parents have died, as well as her aunt and a cousin and other cousins have grown up and moved out of the house. Her uncle’s sister comes to stay and brings her granddaughter, Mary White. Mary and Molly become close friends during their short time together and Molly faithfully writes to her throughout her life, even though she is not sure that Mary is still alive. The second stage of the story takes place after Molly’s Uncle Junius dies. Simon Black, a former friend of Molly’s parents shows up shortly after Junius’ death and sends Molly off to boarding school in Virginia. At the Gatewood Academy, Molly blossoms and becomes the darling of her classmates and many of her teachers. The headmistress, Mariah Snow, however, is not impressed with Molly from the very first. Her distaste for her and her self-hatred are clearly evident in the journal that she keeps. The next stage begins when Molly and Agnes leave the Gatewood Academy and take over a small school in the mountains of North Carolina. It is here that Molly gets her love story (she and Mary White were constantly making up love stories for each other on Agate Hill). Engaged to a prominent businessman from Salisbury, N.C., Molly runs off in the night with a man of questionable morals and characters. Jacky Jarvis is the only man for Molly and he and his family welcome her into their homes and their hearts. Unfortunately, Molly’s and Jacky’s lives were filled with sorrow as one after another of their children either die at a very early age or are stillborn. Devastated by each loss, somehow Molly manages to find the strength the pull through each time, but each time it becomes more difficult for her. As the story of Molly begins to wind down, a major “plot-twist” is thrown in when the reader learns of the mysterious death of Jacky Jarvis and the trial of Molly Petree Jarvis for his murder. The last stage of the story brings Molly back to Agate Hill and her guardian, Simon Black. Molly spends her last years in the place she knew as a young girl and in the company of Simon’s former servant and her own cousin, who was born shortly before Molly left Agate Hill to attend the Gatewood Academy. The main themes in this heartwarming tale are those of loss and survival and of living one’s life to one’s own satisfaction, regardless of the opinions of others. Loss and survival are the most obvious themes, as they are present from the very beginning. Molly lost many family members through death prior to the beginning of the novel and even more before she went off to school. She lost her cousin Spencer, while she was at Gatewood and then she lost all of her children and finally her husband and then Simon Black. Death however was not the only form of loss for Molly. She also had to deal with the loss of close friends, as they were forced to move away or their life’s journey took them elsewhere. At her trial for Jacky’s murder, Molly commented in her journal later, that seeing the family there, she realized that even though they supported her, she no longer belonged with them. In regards to the theme of living your life to your own satisfaction: as the reader learns more about Molly, they see that she often has opinions and tastes that tend to contradict what polite society would find acceptable. The best example of this is when she ran off and married Jacky Jarvis. She ignored the gossip and talk about him and followed her heart and never once regretted it. Overall, I found this book to be a very enjoyable read. I usually find myself drawn to books that have strong, well defined characters and I was not disappointed with this one. I read it slowly, over a three month period (not due to lack of interest, but lack of time to read!) and this allowed Molly to linger in my thoughts and become someone that I felt I knew and I grew to care about what happened to her.