Appalachia Project: The Land Breakers, 1964

The Land Breakers, by John Ehle

The landscape has changed around me. The world of The Land Breakers drew me in so completely that I see the landscape of another time. Land Breakers takes place in the 1780s in the Appalachians of western North Carolina and Virginia. The land is unsettled. The hero of the book, Mooney, builds the first structure in his valley, makes an ax ring out for the first time, fells oaks bigger around than the cabin he build from them.

These woods no longer exist, this old growth forest. It looks forested now, but what is growing is still new, much of it planted in the 1930s to prevent runoff. The land was cleared for settlements, but also for industry and fuel. Iron furnaces so common in Appalachian Ohio consumed acres and acres of trees every day. Glass making, too, chewed through timber, moving west until natural gas ceased the onslaught. Old growth is big trees and big animals. Old growth is bears and panthers and wolves. Old growth is not spindly trees and underbrush like what surround my town now and passes for woods. Mooney would not recognize this place. Even in the unsettled parts of Appalachia, the wood was cut and what grew back is not the woods he settled.

See, I talk about Mooney like he was a real person. I feel like I lived with him, ate corn meal and water, spent a week cutting down one tree, faced down a bear, and built a family as surely as he build hog pens and a spring house. The forest he saw is now overlaid on my tiny town and I see Walnut Street as a footpath hemmed in by huge trees. I can conjure up a pack of wolves.

The Land Breakers is about Mooney, Harrison, Lorry, and a few others who have the thirst, the wanderlust, the drive to make a place their own. Mooney came to the colonies as a child and spent years in indentured servitude. He left service with only a few possessions and the idea that he wanted something that was truly his own. He had little to lose and everything to gain by moving out into the unknown mountains. Harrison was craftier, seeing an opportunity to develop his own sphere of wealth and control. He didn't want anyone messing with his authority anymore. Another family arrived seeking to hide a brother from the law.

It's the details that build this world--details of feelings as well as setting. The reader becomes engaged in the struggle to defeat or at least make peace with this wilderness. This is a pre-Earth Day book, and assumes that land-breaking is a good and necessary thing to do--a human thing to do--a biological imperative, if you will, to find more space with less competition for resources. All animals do it, so why shouldn't humans? Mooney experiences the wilderness as awesome, frightening. He senses himself as an intruder--an unwelcome intruder. The land he selects and settles does not need him. He does not add anything to the cycles of life existing for centuries.

The book covers the first five years of this little settlement and flirts with soap opera, but stays just this side of it. The characters are rich and multi-dimensional, which is refreshing. The girl Mina is annoying for most of the book, but my annoyance was always tempered with understanding as the author fleshed in the emotional details as surely as adolescence fleshed out the girl. Mooney's wife is interesting, and their love story is sweet.

This book would make a superb movie. Drama abounds--drama drawn from the setting itself in the life/death struggle. Dangerous animals--bears, snakes, wolves, weasels--see humans both as concentrators of food and as food. For the animals, it's a bit like having a 7-11 move into the neighborhood. Readers, be ready to gasp, curse, vomit, and have your hair stand on end. What keeps this book from being lurid is that the action truly springs from the place--it's not added for shock value.

I appreciate the role of dogs in this book. A dog guarded the family and warned of danger. Dogs also acted as partners in hunting. The dogs in this book, like the dogs I've known, were loyal, loving, and would lay down their lives for their families. A dog was as essential as a plow and a rifle, as important as a good corn crop. You just can't make is without a dog. Special thanks for Candygram, Whispers, and Marigold.

The labor of the settlers is staggering--the non-stop work required for basic shelter, food, and clothing. Lorry spins, weaves, and tans all of the cloth for the family--wool, linen, linsy-woolsy, deer and bear leather. She sheers the sheep. The book goes into detail about the making of molasses from sugar cane--the only sweetener besides honey. The cane must be mashed and ground, squeezed and drained, cooked and skimmed. And before he puts up fence, Mooney must make the pegs and lashings that will hold it together, in addition to cutting and splitting the wood itself. Exhausting and exhaustive.


The early Appalachian settlers--those that survived and stayed--reflect many of the classic Appalachian traits: grit, self-sufficiency, toughness, stubbornness, independence, handiness, and unflappability (somewhat of a flat affect!). The weak and frivolous were lost to the population. Today, a key issue is that the classic Appalachian traits are not functional for today's world. Today's skill set--communication and teamwork in an often hierarchical setting--has no place for stubbornness and flat affect.

Mooney comes to see that he is not a land breaker. Indeed, he is broken by the land. He scratches out a tiny toehold for himself, but he does not win. Over time, sheer numbers of humans do win. We are living now with the results of that hollow victory.