SIMPLE ANNALS, by Robert H. Allen

Robert H. Allen
Simple Annals
Two Centuries of an American Family

Like a patchwork quilt made from family memories, Simple Annals is an American saga that spans two centuries, from Revolutionary times to the present day.

In the tradition of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, ex-hillbilly Robert Allen has documented in prose and poetry the folklore and history of his Tennessee clan. More absorbing than any dry recounting of the tragedies and triumphs of the Allen family could be, [Book Cover] this unique album-in-words sings of war heroes, farmers, God, graveyards, and violent death; of "hoop snakes" and ghosts; hard times and occasional, fleeting moments of joy and celebration. It chronicles the American Revolution, the Civil War — Tennessee, where Allen's ancestors fought for the Union, saw some of the most savage border fighting — and Allen's own extraordinary personal leap from backwoods poverty to life as a university professor. Out of family legends and traditions, Allen has woven a classic of Americana.

Robert H. Allen was born in 1949 in rural western Tennessee. Until he entered Bethel College at the age of 32, he had never gone to school a day in his life. As a 1991 profile of him in Parade magazine stated, up to that point "he had never ridden a bicycle or been inside a movie theater or out on a date." Allen had learned to read in a ramshackle farmhouse where he lived with elderly relatives — his grandfather, three great-aunts and a great-uncle.

Allen left western Tennessee for the first time in his life to earn both his M.A. and Ph.D. at Vanderbilt. He now lives in Martin, Tennessee.

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