Goodbye to the Buttermilk Sky

By Julia Oliver

This highly praised first novel by fiction writer Julia Oliver is the story of one young woman's struggle with fidelity and identity in depression-era rural Alabama.

A beautifully narrated novel of time and place, Goodbye to the Buttermilk Sky re-creates a southern summer when the depression and the boll weevil turned hopes to dust. With the extraordinary talent to make the reader see the Ball canning jars on the kitchen table, hear the clicks on the party line, and feel the bittersweet moments of 20-year-old Callie Tatum's first experiences with adult desire, Oliver portrays a young wife's increasingly dangerous infidelity with cinematic precision and palpable suspense. Soon, with only her housekeeper as a confidant, Callie breaks society's rules about race and class as well as her marriage vows. The result is a chain of events that will lead to tragedy and a woman's stunning decision about love, passion, and the future of her life.

Originally published in cloth in 1994, Goodbye to the Buttermilk Sky received considerable attention nationally and became a featured selection of the Quality Paperback Book Club. Its inclusion in the Deep South Books series from The University of Alabama Press will extend the book's reach and its life, while offering new readers access to the enthralling story.

The richly drawn, fully developed characters of Buttermilk Sky live on in the reader's mind long after the book has been finished. Against the emotional and physical isolation of rural Alabama in 1938, the threads of family ties, whispered gossip, old secrets, and unfulfilled dreams weave a powerful, evocative story that captivates its reader until the very last word.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0817311459
• ISBN13: 9780817311452
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.9" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Worth your time

I found this book on my book shelf and I'm not really sure where it came from but opened it and was very interested when I saw that it was written in my state's capitol and published in my very own town. I enjoyed it and finished it in record time. Worth your time!

Loved this book!

I enjoyed this book very much & hated for it to end. I was very aggravated with Callie from time to time & wanted to shake her but at the same time she is a very likeable character. I loved the time period & the author did a fantastic job writing about the South. I hope that the author gives us more like this book. Read it!! If you like books about the south & romance you will like this one.

BACKWOODS WIFE TASTES LIFE BEYOND FENCE

A mother of grown children who writes a superlative first novel deserves being celebrated, which is the case of Julia Oliver and her GOODBYE TO THE BUTTERMILK SKY. The rural south of the '30's, with its clabber, scuppernongs, tree frogs, and croker sacks, is as tangible as 20-year-old Callie, her depressed husband, and the blue-eyed stranger who leads Callie to fulfillment. Suspense steadily tightens throughout this tale of illicit love, a libidinous minister, rape, and murder, and culminates in an unexpectedly satisfying ending. Fair warning: meet Callie on page 1, and you, like her, can't resist going all the way.