Corrected version
The story of how the forthcoming edition of Mary Hamilton’s autobiography, “Trials of the Earth,” has come to face a national resurgence is almost as compelling as the book itself.
Written in 1931 and narrating, day by day, the events of an entire lifetime — beginning in 1884 — the manuscript of a hardworking woman in the timber camps of the Delta was not published until 1991, unbeknownst to Hamilton’s family members.
The book’s publiishing history begins with its editor, Helen Dick Davis. According to Kerry Hamilton, Mary Hamilton’s great-grandson, Davis was a friend and neighbor of the Hamilton family who loved to listen to Mary’s stories. She urged Mary to write down her long history, but the writer did not think she could do it. Finally, Mary agreed, and, said Kerry, “it just flowed. And thank goodness she wrote it down.”
When the time came to publish the book, however, Hamilton said she could not go through with it because of an ominous dream she’d had. In her dream, her husband, Frank, whom she writes about frequently in “Trials of the Earth,” visited her and told her not to proceed with the publication of her manuscript.
Kerry said he was 15 when he was shown the unpublished manuscript written by his great-grandmother. It was titled “This Last is Mine.”
“In 1993, I was in Square Books in Oxford, and I found her book under a different title,” he said.
According to Kerry, the manuscript was nearly the same one he had first laid eyes on when he was 15, with a new title, “Trials of the Earth.” Kerry said Davis probably didn’t remember that Hamilton had not wanted the manuscript published.
Davis was 92 when The University of Mississippi Press took on the project of publishing Hamilton’s manuscript. JoAnne Prichard, an editor there, met with Davis and her son, Nick, to complete the copy editing of the book. The book was published in 1991.
When Kerry came across the published work, he and his family immediately went about restoring the rights to the book to Mary’s heirs.
“It took us a long time to track down all the heirs, do all the legal work necessary and to make this something that the family could own,” he said.
“When Mary died in the ’30s, she had no will, so we had to get the state to recognize the book’s ownership,” said Kerry.
“I started working on it in 1995, and my father started working on it right after the book was published. We tried to get the university’s press to reassign the rights to the family, but at that time there was no one to give the rights to, so we had to create a limited liability company,” said Kerry.
“It’s wonderful that the heirs of Mary Hamilton now own the rights to the work,” he said. “It’s important to our family, but also it’s important for the memory of our great grandmother. It’s important that she had this for her family.”
Kerry mentioned a particularly stirring image as further justification for the book’s reappropriation. In a letter to Davis that the editor quotes in her introduction, Hamilton described the scene that would eventually inspire the book’s working title.
“On all sides of me rose lilies, white as snow,” writes Hamilton. “They grew on large jet black stems.There were two children, yours, Helen, laughing and crowding so close behind me. I began breaking off the flowers...and handing them back to the children. I had them loaded down with those great white blossoms. I was tired and wanted to rest, but they kept crowding so close and saying, ‘More, please, more’...I spoke for the first time. ‘You get no more, children. This last is mine.’”
“This book was her gift to herself,” said Kerry. “It’s her gift to her family and to Mississippi.”
Willie Morris, JoAnne Prichard’s husband, suggested the name change, and Kerry said that although his family discussed changing the title of the book back to the original one derived from Hamilton’s dream, it eventually decided against such a switch.
“‘Trials of the Earth’ is a little more marketable,” he said.
Hamilton’s story begins when her father moves his young family to the wild, unsettled country of Arkansas. The family faces a number of eloquently rendered hardships, and when Mary is 18 she marries Frank Hamilton.
Frank is a mysterious man throughout the book, but it is through this relationship and other harsh moments that readers will recognize Mary Hamilton’s unwavering dedication to life and living. The couple moves to the Mississippi Delta to establish a boardinghouse for loggers who are clearing the virgin land. No matter how difficult life gets —Mary bakes 115 loaves of bread a day and often wields a gun to protect her family, to name just a few challenges — Mary Hamilton continues to support her husband and continues to have faith.
According to Kerry, “Trials of the Earth” is as much a book about Mississippi as it is about the whole world. Although the autobiography is set in a specific region, it describes relationships and characters that the most global of readers would find eerily familiar.
That may be one reason actor Morgan Freeman heralds it as one of the best books to come out of his homeland. Freeman wrote the introduction to the new edition.
The official launch event for the book, which is being published by Nautilus Publishing in Taylor, will be held at Turnrow Book Co. from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday. According to Kerry, Turnrow owner Jamie Kornegay was instrumental in the book’s publication.
“Turnrow has been a longtime supporter of the book. Jamie reached out to us and helped us get it republished,” he said.
“Greenwood is the center of the Delta, and the book means so much for the Delta itself,” Kerry added.
The book will be published nationally and has already gotten a great deal of attention from national publications, according to Kerry.
“The book will expand people’s knowledge of the region, but it’s more universal than that,” he said. “People will connect with it all over the country and all over the world.”
• Contact Jeanie Riess at 581-7235 or jriess@gwcommonwealth.com.
