In Even As We Breathe, novelist Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle transports readers back to the summer of 1942 in Western North Carolina, taking them back and forth between Cherokee and Asheville’s Grove Park Inn, where diplomats from hostile countries like Japan, Italy, and Germany are now prisoners sitting out the war.
Our guide and narrator in this story is Cowney Sequoyah, a Cherokee teenager who, impaired from birth by a defective foot and thus unable to serve in the military, finds employment at the Grove Park. An orphan—his mother passed away following his birth, and his father died mysteriously in combat in World War I—Cowney is raised by his grandmother, Lishie, whom he adores, and by his Uncle Bud, whom he despises. Cowney wants out of Cherokee and hopes to save his summer earnings and make his way into college.
As the days pass, Cowney grows closer to Essie Stamper, the young Cherokee woman from his past who also works at the inn. They begin meeting in Room 447, to which Essie has the key, playing dominoes, reading, and most importantly, sharing their plans for the future. Cowney talks of his academic ambitions, and Essie dreams of escaping Western North Carolina altogether, hoping to live in New York City or abroad.
Eventually Cowney finds himself falling in love with Essie, but those affections are not returned. Among the many men pursuing her is the son of an Italian diplomat, Andrea, who promises to take her with him when he is finally allowed to return home.
Meanwhile, Cowney must also deal with difficulties back home in Cherokee. Forest fires are ravaging the mountains, Lishie is becoming older and frail, and Uncle Bud’s drinking has grown worse. Cowney finds himself torn between his responsibilities in Cherokee and the allure of Essie and the inn.
In addition to dealing with the deaths of two of his loved ones and the weight of ignorance he carries regarding his family’s past, Cowney also finds himself a suspect when a diplomat’s young daughter goes missing and must fight desperately against these false charges.
In addition to this intriguing story, Even As We Breathe brings other pleasures to its readers, the first of which is Clapsaddle’s poetic language. She possesses the talents necessary for a good novelist—strong characters, for example, and the ability to create and sustain suspense—but occasionally she also unleashes a poetic side that adds beauty to the story.
“This land is ours because of what is buried in the ground, not what words appear on a paper—even this paper. However, it can also be said that bones shift and decay. Blood dries and flecks. Flesh withers. And the only thing separating us is the stories we choose to tell about them.”
Clapsaddle brings that poetry to her descriptions of the land: the mountains, the streams and waterfalls, the roads and cabins. Here is part of a passage on the Grove Park Inn:
“The base of the main structure mimicked the stone-formed mountain landscape. Succeeding generations of stonemasons must have labored to jigsaw the fragments together. It splayed across the hillside, dipping down and rising with the ridgeline. With its bright red terracotta tile cottage sag, the roofline was anything but natural. Nothing camouflaged this edifice among the blue-gray mountains; it set the Smokies ablaze.”
Even As We Breathe is also a fine coming-of-age novel. Not only is Cowney an innocent in the world outside of Cherokee—an FBI agent gives him his first Cheerwine—but he must also deal with a myriad of psychological blows: his one-sided emotional entanglement with Essie, the loss of his beloved grandmother, a fellow employee who makes a game of denigrating him, a soldier whom he considered a friend who accuses him of a crime he didn’t commit.
As we watch Cowney deal with these wounds, Clapsaddle does a fine job of showing the emotional growth of this young man. The boy who wanted to escape the mountains eventually says, “Before the cabin was completely out of sight, I turned and watched as the smoke, a sign I had always taken to indicate civilization, ascended from the chimney of the now empty home, and I realized how wrong I had been about that… By Western standards, this was far from civilization. Then again, it was probably the most civilized society I could imagine—a society of essentials.”
Finally, Clapsaddle does excellent work recreating a piece of often forgotten history. She brings alive the Grove Park Inn during this time when it served as a diplomatic internment camp, showing us the soldiers, their diplomatic charges, and the staff like Essie and Cowney.
She does the same when she moves her readers back to Cherokee, reminding us that only 80 years ago many people there still practiced a barter economy, lived a barebones life, and made do with what they had at hand. They hunted, fished, and trapped, got eggs from chickens and milk from cows, and heated their homes with logs.
All good reasons to add Even As We Breathe to your reading list.
One small quibble: World War I ended in 1918, Even As We Breathe is set in 1942, and Cowney was born before the war ended, yet the novel features him as a nineteen-year-old. Those figures don’t add up.