Slender is the Thread: Tales from a Country Law Office

A string of books by Harry M. Caudill beginning in the early 60's with Night Comes to The Cumberlands kicked down the door for the region. Caudill's biography of a land where economic prosperity for a few had left others with very little ushered the Great Society into Central Appalachia, created the Appalachian Regional Commission, led to the rise of prominent Appalachian politicians like Robert Byrd and Carl D. Perkins, and as some critics would come to say, caused the region to become wholly dependant on Federal money. Slender is the Thread: Tales from a Country Law Office, finds an older Caudill looking fondly on the world he swung the wrecking ball to help destroy, a world of corrupt corporations, corrupt (but often likeable) political bosses and local power players, and a diverse crowd of Appalachian Stereotypes, as he reminisces in a what would most accurately be described as a series of short stories relaying the cases and dealings of himself and other local attorneys, his peers as well as his mentors, in which Caudill peppers with humorous anecdotes. Caudill takes the title from a phrase used by his friend and colleague John Y. Brown I, a prominent Lexington criminal attorney. Caudill relates how Brown, who had planned on using the title for a book he never got around to writing, reflected on the uncertainty of the legal process, the blind goddess of justice, holding the scales in her hand by a thread, and how perfect justice could be easily corrupted and unbalanced by that slender thread. This theme is what Caudill uses to weave together a series of otherwise unrelated narratives of his experiences in Eastern Kentucky courtrooms and politics. He describes in a vivid storyteller's detail cases in which he wonders how the goddess of blind justice would have looked upon the decision. In one such case, involving an African-American miner who, after being ostracized by the local community for his alleged philandering with some of the younger women in the community, took vengeance by emptying a shotgun on the roof of a house where a party was taking place, a party he wasn't invited too. In the three months between his hearing and his trial, Caudill retells advising his client to make amends with the local black community, who had shown up full force at the hearing to see him off to prison. Caudill advises his client to pay for the damages to the roof, and begin attending church on a regular basis, moving up one pew a week, until, when he reaches the front pew, going to the altar to seek redemption. Caudill relates how that, much to the ire of the judge and prosecuting attorney the black community turned out again, this time to beg that the charges be dropped. After the charges are dropped, of course, the accused returned to his philandering ways, and came home one day to a vengeful wife, who put five .22 shorts into his back. Surviving the incident, the man and his wife subsequently "made up" and he wound up having to pay her fine of $200, w

This book almost tells the reader more than he wants to know. How could crooked politicians, coal and lumber companies take such advantage of a poverty stricken and illiterate people to hold them down like animals (or worse) generation after generation? The stories are fascinating but there is always the underlying sadness of knowing this actually happened and much of it still thrives. Little has changed in 200 years.

Slender is the Thread is an account of the attorney/author Harry M. Caudill's law practice in the Appalachian community of Letcher County, KY. In his book, Caudill relives various cases and political events in his life in this country county. Much of his writing is witty and satirical in dealing with some very serious issues. He writes of corruption in the legal and political system as well as "mountain" ways of dealing with daily problems in the lives of mountain folk. The book provides vivid and colorful accounts allowing the reader to become absorbed in Caudill's words to the point of feeling like you are there. The names of various real persons and politicians in Letcher county are mentioned in the book. The book also provides some very interesting history of Letcher county and Appalachian region of Kentucky. Caudill has written other books like "Night Comes to the Cumberlands" and "Theirs Be the Powers." Caudill is presently dead and his books on Appalachia are very scarce but well worth the extra effort to obtain for reading. I rate "Slender is the Thread" with four stars.