Home Before Dark by Sue Ellen Bridgers
"Home Before Dark" by Sue Ellen Bridgers is a coming-of-age novel set on a North Carolina tobacco farm, exploring themes of identity, family, and personal growth. The story follows James Earl Willis, who returns to his childhood home after years away, accompanied by his wife Mae and their four children. Central to the narrative is James Earl's daughter, Stella, a determined young girl eager to carve out her own place in the world. As she navigates relationships with family, friends, and first loves, Stella's journey is marked by both the challenges of adolescence and the complexities of adult emotions, particularly following the death of her mother.
The novel features a cast of characters, including Stella's father, her supportive uncle Newton, and the local townspeople, each contributing to Stella's quest for self-discovery. Bridgers employs a realistic storytelling approach, reminiscent of Southern literary traditions, and presents characters with depth and authenticity. While the narrative addresses personal rather than overtly social issues, it is grounded in the cultural context of rural life. Through Stella’s experiences, the novel deftly portrays the bittersweet nature of growing up, ultimately leaving her with a stronger sense of self and a clearer understanding of her family's dynamics. "Home Before Dark" stands as Bridgers' first novel, showcasing her ability to engage with youthful perspectives in a thoughtful and relatable manner.
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Home Before Dark by Sue Ellen Bridgers
First published: 1976
Type of work: Domestic realism
Themes: Coming-of-age, family, friendship, and love and romance
Time of work: The 1960’s and 1970’s
Recommended Ages: 13-15
Locale: A tobacco farm and small town in eastern North Carolina
Principal Characters:
Stella Willis , a spirited fourteen-year-old, who gladly turns from her migrant wanderings to the promise of a permanent homeJames Earl Willis , Stella’s thirty-two-year-old father, who returns to his boyhood home after sixteen yearsMae Willis , Stella’s self-effacing mother, who resists change in the family life-styleToby Brown , Stella’s first real friendRodney Biggers , Stella’s first boyfriendMaggie Grover , the owner of the town’s dry goods store, whom James Earl courts when Mae diesNewton Willis , James Earl’s younger brother, who has managed the farm since his brother leftAnne Willis , Newton’s conscientious wife, who becomes a role model for Stella
The Story
The events of Home Before Dark occur on and around a North Carolina tobacco farm during the six months of the crop’s planting, cultivation, and harvest. James Earl Willis left the family farm as an adolescent, spent sixteen years of transient work in the Air Force and on other people’s farms, and is returning with his wife, Mae, and their four children. He and his oldest daughter, Stella, share a compelling curiosity about the land and a dawning hope in staking out a new, more permanent life for themselves on it. Stella, young, eager, and determined, is single-minded in setting out on this newest and most important journey, a journey toward discovering and securing something of her own. The insecure and frightened Mae, on the other hand, guards her identity by the constant movement of the road.
Stella is the dominant character through whom the novel unfolds, but she does not set out on her journey alone. Other family members and new friends play important roles in Stella’s life and take on a life of their own: Stella’s immediate family, James Earl’s well-intentioned brother Newton, Newton’s efficient wife, Anne, the farm tenants—Silas, Synora, and Toby Brown—and the town merchants, beauticians, and undertakers. Over the timid reluctance of her mother and the cautious restraint of her father, uncle, and aunt, Stella claims their shotgun house by painting it and then goes beyond the compass of the family to establish new friendships and to discover romance.
The promise of relationships, however, becomes complicated in the growing conflict between Toby Brown, her first friend, and Rodney Biggers, her first boyfriend. Stella attracts each with her vital curiosity and energy and shocks each into a recognition of his own inchoate needs and desires. Toby’s life has been situated between the hard farm life of his devoted parents and his dreams. Rodney lives within the circumscription of his middle-class town life with its conventional and rigid rules, which he can neither completely escape nor completely follow. As Toby’s quiet misery increases and Rodney’s headlong dash into romance intensifies, Mae dies. Stella’s need for intimacy in her grief clarifies her feelings for each boy, though the resolution is confused and painful and its consequences are violent.
As Stella moves on her journey toward self-discovery, James Earl embarks on a parallel journey. James Earl is grieved but freed by his wife’s death. As Stella ex-plores young love, James Earl begins to court forty-year-old Maggie Grover, a woman who has buried her hopes and exhausted her energies in nursing her parents and managing their store. The autumn marriage of James Earl and Maggie leaves Stella in a final dilemma: She must decide whether to move to Maggie’s big house in town and abandon the shotgun house, the first thing which she has ever owned and which at last gives her life strong definition. Her decision signals a solidification of her self; she no longer feels threatened that she will lose the essential person she is becoming. Her problems are not completely resolved, but her ego has been secured in its identity and her vitality remains intact.
Context
Home Before Dark is Bridgers’ first novel. It has a straightforward narrative structure which owes its impulse to the tradition of realism and, more specifically, to other Southern writers, such as Eudora Welty and Anne Tyler, who tell unsentimental but affectionate and engaging stories about ordinary people. Unlike these writers, however, Bridgers focuses on adolescents and takes them seriously. Three of Bridgers’ other four books, All Together Now (1979), Notes for Another Life (1981), and Permanent Connections (1987), involve a set of vivid characters whose lives are interrelated with that of a central adolescent character. The fourth, Sara Will (1985), has a middle-aged woman at its center, but a teenager is the catalyst of her change. Bridgers’ novels, therefore, are akin to Olive A. Burns’s Cold Sassy Tree (1984), with its central adolescent amid a host of other, colorful characters.
The novel’s realism extends to plot, character, cultural setting, and tone. Bridgers presents no sentimental stereotypes but convincing individuals with all the virtues and weaknesses to which human beings fall heir. Though the novel does not turn on contemporary social issues, it is set in a genuine, believable, cultural context. Finally, Bridgers’ tone is that of the realist, neither earnest and solemn nor detached and bitter. As a writer, she enters into minds different from one another with acceptance and affirmation, not judgment.