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"""The old, established community, with its folk code, its superstitions, its prejudices, imaginations, etc., in direct opposition to the new or modern world of reality and progress, can hardly survive. A man from this community sells his body to some fairly modern doctors, and from then on lives in fear and cowardice -- continually weighing his fate after death, including the idea of resurrection, against the moral obligation of his bargain -- and after his death becomes the community hero."" --Ruth Ann Musick-summarizing theme of Hell's Holler Hell's Holler was the 1943 University of Iowa doctoral dissertation of Ruth Ann Musick, who became one of the country's premiere folklorists during the mid-twentieth century, founding the West Virginia Folklore Journal and managing that state's Folklore Center. Set in the rural Northeast Missouri area where she grew up, Hell's Holler recounts ordinary and extraordinary events in the lives of George and Mary Moore, their children, parents, and neighbors. It features the folklore, customs, songs, dances, and superstitions of the region, and especially attends to questions about medicine and health prompted by Musick's interest in the nearby College of Osteopathic Medicine. This publication includes dozens of sketches by the author's brother, Archie Musick, who went on to become a well known mid-century artist--a friend and protege of Thomas Hart Benton, and a colleague of Jackson Pollack. The novel is accompanied by two Prefaces and an Afterword. The first preface, by Missouri Folklore Society's Adam Davis, deals mainly with historical contexts, folkloric contents, and the training in folklore collecting which helped Musick create the characters and world of Hell's Holler. The second, by artist Pat Musick--niece of the author and daughter of the artist--foregrounds the extraordinarily talented family which produced Ruth Ann and Archie. Pat Musick relies on a trove of letters and journals, drafts and synopses, to understand the attitudes, anxieties, and exaggerations which inhabit Hell's Holler, and in some cases, the real-life models for characters. The Afterword is by Judy Prozzillo Byers, student, folklorist, friend, and biographer of the author. As director of the West Virginia Folklore Center at the university where Musick taught for thirty years, Byers accents the ways in which the novel reveals its author's values. She reads Hell's Holler as a classic example of how Musick fought for underdogs--in this case, uneducated farmers whose superstitions nourished and grounded them as firmly as their music and church services did."

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Folklorist Ruth Ann Musick was born in Kirksville, Missouri in 1897. She grew up on a small farm surrounded by talented parents and siblings immersed in the songs, arts, customs, and tales of the region. She earned a math degree in 1919 from the local college (now Truman State), and after years of studying, teaching and adventuring, a Ph.D. in English from what's now the University of Iowa. Hell's Holler, a novel set near Kirksville, was her 1943 dissertation. Musick eventually settled in Fairmont, West Virginia, where she revived the West Virginia Folklore Society, created the state's Folklore Society Journal and developed the Folklore program at Fairmont State College (now University). She published four major collections of folklore, wrote two popular folklore columns and dozens of journal articles, mentored countless student collectors, and advocated for environmental causes. Musick died in 1974. Archie Musick (1902-1978) illustrated three of his sister's folklore collections. A nationally known artist, he did murals for the New Deal Public Works of Art Project, studied with Thomas Hart Benton, collaborated with Jackson Pollock, and taught for decades at the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado. Most of the images in this volume are from the files of his daughter, Pat Musick (herself an artist). They were not created specifically to illustrate HELL'S HOLLER, but are of a piece with that novel's spirit, time, and place. Pat Ruth Musick's work encompasses illustration, calligraphy, teaching, research on early manuscripts, making murals of glass fused to metal, and artist residencies in national parks. A Colorado-based artist, writer, and educator, she is the niece of Dr. Ruth Ann Musick and shares the affection and admiration her aunt felt for West Virginia's people, lore, creatures, and land.

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