Sins of the 7th Sister

[JesusA (imported)]

Sins of the 7th Sister by Huston Curtiss is a novel/memoir. It's billed as a "novel," but it is written by Huston Curtiss III and the central character is named Huston Curtiss III, born at the same time and place as the author. Lightly fictionalized autobiography is the most likely genre.

The framing device for the story is that Curtiss has been asked to write the memoirs of an 80+ year-old opera singer - Stella Fancler. He has known Stella since he was seven and Stella was 16. He quickly discovers that he can't write Stella's story without writing his own.

Stella was born Stanley Black, but was castrated at age 10 (in 1923) as part of the punishment for slitting his father's throat after his father had beaten his mother to death in a drunken rage. At age 16 he was thrown out of the county orphanage in rural West Virginia where he had spent six years and was hired to help train horses on the Curtiss family farm.

It's definitely a mainstream book - published by Random House. It's clearly MOSTLY autobiographical, and we're left wondering if Stanley/Stella is real or not. The details argue that s/he is!

In the first twenty-five pages there are three brief discussions of castration - two animal, one human. There are a few others scattered through the story, including one on the castrati during a conversation with a Catholic priest/former member of the Vienna Boys' Choir, who takes on Stella for voice training. They indicate how such might be handled in a story that can be published mainstream.

______________________

Page 18 - a conversation over lunch:

The two of them [the hired hands] had gone up to the high meadow about a mile up the mountainside, where we grazed the summer sheep. They were going to help Uncle Billie, who lived up there in the summer and, with his dog, shepherded the flock of maturing lambs. They castrated the young rams before their hormones got to work and they started butting each other's heads. Tuba [the Black housekeeper] hated this day, for the men always brought back a bucket of bloody testicles to be fried.

Over lunch Tuba delcared, "I ain't gonna do it, I ain't fryin' no more of them mountain oysters!"

My mother said, "Don't worry. I sent up a big iron skillet, some lard, some eggs, and some cornmeal to Uncle Billie, with a note to fry the oysters up there."

Tuba looked confused. "You sent Uncle Billie a note? Ain't you forgettin' he can't read?"

"Lord help me, I did! When I remake the world, I'm going to make sure everyone can read and write."

Page 20 - showing Stanley around the horse barn, stopping to look at the bound volumes of breeding records:

My mother was turning the pages of the current records. "Right now we have sixteen mares, two stallions, and ten two-year-olds overdue to be broken to the bridle and the saddle. I always hate to bring them in from the meadow. It's like the end of childhood, and a life of earning your keep begins. We also have four geldings."

Stanley looked confused. "Horses?"

"Horses that have been castrated for some reason or other. They're gentled, we use them for riding here on the farm." Stanley's face was blank, but my mother didn't notice.

Pages 21-22 - while showing Stanley his room in the loft of the horse barn:

"But won't you be afraid here in the barn, all by yourself?"

"It would be nice to be by myself. I never have been. Until my mother died, we lived, seven of us, in a space half this size."

"I had no heard you had brothers and sisters."

"Oh yes. My little brother Tubby, a woman came in a Model T and took him the first day - after - after - he was cute. And my two sisters were eight and nine. A woman came and said she was our cousin and took them. I don't think she was - she was black. My brother Elmer went into the navy the day he was fifteen, that was the day my father beat him up and threw him out the door. I forgot about the time I was in the county hospital. I had a room to myself for two days."

"When you were in the hospital?"

"Right after they did the inquest. They did to me what you do to the horses - the geldings."

"My mother stopped rocking and shoved the chair back until it hit the wall. "You mean they castrated you? Those sons of bitches!"

"Judge Brown said I could go to prison with the other killers, or reform school. He said they were tough on pretty boys there. Or I could get fixed so it took the killer out of me, and go to the orphanage until I was sixteen. But no one would adopt me - who wants someone who killed his father? Even if the father had choked the mother to death and was lying on her dead body. And I didn't say I killed him."

"I don't want you ever to tell me whether you killed him or not. I'll tell you one thing, if I had been there, I would have killed him. And I'm not sure I may not just go into town and kill Judge Brown."

__________________

All tastefully done, but still very powerful. Castration is not the theme of the book, but it's definitely an important plot element. Most of the book is set in 1929 and 1930, with only brief mention of the world since. The book is also a great read, and I had a hard time rationing it so that it's 358 pages lasted three nights.