Serena

Literature has quite a collection of menacing women. Medea turned love into merciless rage when she was betrayed by her husband. Lady Macbeth fueled her husband’s vaulting ambition to become king and readily plotted murder for anyone who got in their way. Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler is a barren woman who plots to destroy fertility and creativity in others.

In Ron Rash’s remarkable fourth novel, Serena, a dark and pitiless sorceress deserves to take an honored place in this pantheon of wicked women. In fact, the book’s antagonist, Serena Pemberton, embodies the vices of all of her predecessors. The drama unfolds with all the intrigue and bloodletting of a 17th century Jacobean revenge tragedy.

The setting is Western North Carolina in the turbulent decade following the 1929 stock market crash. While naturalist and writer Horace Kephart struggles to save the region’s diminishing wilderness, timber barons are intent on reducing the same area to an immense, stump-studded wilderness. When the Pemberton Lumber Company arrives in Waynesville with George and Serena Pemberton at the helm, they quickly demonstrate the essence of timber baron morality:  arrogance, greed, and an immense hunger to subdue and destroy the natural world. All of which is forged into a ruthless single-mindedness:  a desire to succeed at all cost.  

Kephart makes an eerie prediction regarding the tragic consequences of lumber mills when he witnesses the arrival of the “mindless machines” on the slopes near Hazel Creek in Our Southern Highlanders:

[Every tree, plant, beast and fish] will be swept away. Fire will blacken the earth; flood will swallow and spew forth the soil. The simple-hearted native men and women will scatter and disappear. In their stead will come slaves speaking strange tongues to toil in darkness under rocks. Soot will rise and foul gases; the streams will run murky death.

Although George Pemberton quickly demonstrates he is a brutal, selfish and arrogant beast in his own right, he is a pale presence when compared to Serena. Within days of her arrival, she takes control of the camp. Clad in jodhpurs and riding an Arabian stallion, she oversees the camp’s daily operations with a cool confidence that is disturbing. In short order, the work crew learns to both fear and revere Serena. With brutal efficiency she solves problems as diverse as George’s illegitimate child by a local girl, the fates of disruptive employees and untrustworthy investors, and a troublesome local sheriff. Some merely vanish, but the mutilated remains of others (found in hotel rooms or train stations) suggest that for those who defy Serena, the consequences are often fatal.

When timber workers complain of rattlesnakes in the woods (a problem that affects their efficiency), Serena acquires a Persian eagle (it perches on the pommel of her saddle). The bird soars above the work crew as it advances into the forest and occasionally streaks down like a divine force, snatching rattlers from the undergrowth, shredding them and bearing their remains aloft. 

Serena contains an impressive collection of Appalachian folklore ranging from the existence of mountain painters (panthers), the potency of herbal remedies, the belief in madstones, and the means of invoking “blood stoppers.” The mountain natives who are employed by Pemberton are given to lively discussions of folk remedies, superstitions and lore.

At times, Serena Pemberton is in danger of morphing into a near-supernatural being — a kind of blonde Viking warrior who leaves a wake of broken and/or quaking victims behind her. However, she is also a vibrant character in a historic drama. She moves, breathes and speaks from a period of memorable Appalachian history, and her presence adds depth and dimension to our perception of that time. 

Horace Kephart, the Vanderbilts, and a host of adversaries all confront Serena, and the meetings invariably strike sparks. These encounters (real and imagined) give us vivid glimpses into the issues that were at stake when the fate of our shrinking wilderness hung in the balance.

Given the immensity of Serena’s crimes, perhaps no turn of events could satisfy the reader’s need for some special, terrible punishment to end her. Each reader must decide whether or not this wicked woman got what she deserved.