Longing and Living in Kentucky Farm Country

All the Living is a book set on a farm under a big sky, with a few people trying to figure out how they are supposed to live. The plot involves a young pianist named Aloma and her move to her boyfriend Orren’s farm when his family dies. She is ill suited to the environment and to the duties of farm wife, but over time adapts to the role, cleaning the broken down pile of a farm house and teaching herself to cook. Raised as an orphan, she cannot fully understand her boyfriend’s grief. She is drawn to a tiny local church, and its charismatic preacher, as they give her access to her one true love – piano.

The language in the book is really lovely. The author’s intense desire to evoke an atmosphere of desperate longing is clear on every page. The bond of farmer to land, through drought and agony, is beautifully rendered.

I’ve seen this book described in several places as an intersection of religion and fiction, and I don’t agree with that description. The author has a background in theology, so maybe that’s where the idea comes from. However, except for the preaching scenes in the church, I didn’t find that theology or faith was explored in the story. The book takes place in Aloma’s mind, and faith isn’t something she thinks about much (other than the stigma of the pious against unmarried lovers).

I thought that sex and the bond it can create between people was actually the dominant theme, as well as people’s need for other people to define themselves. In the end, I felt like the book was trying to set up a love triangle as the dramatic climax, but I wasn’t invested in its outcome. The preacher never feels like a true option for Aloma to me,  and the reader never really gets to know him as a character. I thought that Orren seemed like a sullen, inward, selfish guy at the end of the book. I did not find him redeemed with respect to Aloma by his relentless hard work or his love for his dead family. These are admirable traits, but do not mean that Orren will make Aloma happy. The only choices presented as viable ones for Aloma were bad ones for her.

I got the sense that the author wanted to convey hard truths, and show some cracks in this realism for light to get through. The book seems to say, look, Aloma’s life has never been an easy one. She has no advantages, no skills for love or abilities for independent strength. A person like this will continue to have a hard life, as many of us do. There are no feminist fairy tales here. There are only moments of joy and beauty, and we hold onto those as we do what we must to survive.

I suppose that’s a fine message. Not every book must have a message, of course, but when you introduce a preacher and have him deliver sermons in your story, then I think you’re setting up an expectation for one. I did not find this story particularly appealing, however. This was a short book, and as a reader I needed more of the characters – either more about them so that I could understand them better, or more strength from Aloma herself.