Opal: A Kentucky Woman
A life stretched across time, place, and the enduring power of memory.
From the hills of Kentucky to the cities of the Eastern United States, Opal Beauleigh Ferguson navigates a life of change, loss, and quiet persistence. Raised on Sarvis Creek, she carries the rhythms of her childhood even as her family moves from town to town, never quite settling, never quite forgetting.
Married at fifteen to Wendell Ferguson, Opal confronts the trials of early adulthood—poverty, illness, and family upheaval—while nurturing a hidden talent for art that becomes her lifeline. Through intimate sketches of her family at the oak table, the ethereally white sarvis blooms of her hills, and the fiery red-and-orange Pegasus of childhood adventure, she preserves the magic and resilience of her past.
Opal: A Kentucky Woman is a multi-generational exploration of family, creativity, and the enduring ties that root us to home.
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Reviews
In Kiser’s novel, an aging woman reflects upon her life, family, and deep Kentucky roots.
Readers meet Opal Beauleigh Ferguson in 2000 at a gathering celebrating her 78th birthday. She’s surrounded by her two remaining siblings, several of her children, and an assortment of grandchildren. Opal and her husband, Wendell, who died several years earlier, built her current house in Ohio after moving there to be nearer their children and grandchildren. But Opal’s heart has always remained in Kentucky, where her great-great-grandparents established a homestead in Osier County after moving from Connecticut in 1849 (“she knows many people, including her younger children, consider this attachment of hers sentimental, suspect. But then they have never lost a home that is also a geography”). As a young girl, Opal had dreamed of becoming a nurse, or of attending a school where her talents as an artist would benefit from formal training. But by the age of 18, she had married Wendell and given birth to the first of their seven children. Wendell’s wanderlust kept them on the move—when WWII broke out and the mines began closing, he took their family to Cincinnati and then Baltimore for work on the docks. After a time back in Kentucky, they moved around in Florida and then Tennessee before finally landing in Ohio. In the year 2000, her thoughts return to the past. Kiser’s meticulously composed prose flows leisurely back and forth through the years, recording Opal’s memories. Lengthy sentences fill the pages with vibrant descriptions of the beautiful Kentucky landscape and vivid depictions of the struggles and dangers of life in a coal-mining town. The novel oscillates between a third-person narrative and Opal’s thoughts, which are rendered in stream-of-consciousness form; one recollection leads to half a dozen others, barely pausing for breath. It takes some time to become accustomed to the pace and the voluminous family references—thankfully, the author helpfully provides an opening list of key characters.
An evocative story with an in-depth primary character portrayal that requires a patient read.
In Opal by Jo Ann Kiser, Opal Beauleigh grows up beside Sarvis Creek in Kentucky with one ambition: becoming an artist. At fifteen, marriage to Wendell Ferguson takes her away from the home she knows, while his search for work carries their family farther from Kentucky. As Opal raises their children, drawing remains the part of herself she keeps private, even as formal study keeps slipping beyond reach. Years pass before she begins to consider what it would take to pursue the life she once imagined for herself. With Wendell growing older beside her, Opal begins asking how much room remained inside the life she had built for the girl who wanted to paint, after decades spent believing that part of her would have to wait.
Jo Ann Kiser’s Opal is an Appalachian literary family saga that makes domestic life feel wonderfully eventful, with a warmth that comes from how closely Kiser understands the people in it. Opal’s kindness gives her easy appeal, and she is really someone we want the best for. Kiser moves across decades so naturally that each shift feels connected to the life already established. Her visual writing is especially lovely at Baltimore’s wartime Camden Station, where soldiers appear small beneath the cavernous ceiling, then again in an Ohio kitchen after Wendell’s birthday dinner, where a ruby- throated hummingbird feeding outside catches the eye. Opal watching Jeanette manage a calf birth gives female capability a quiet certainty, while Wendell reaching from his hospital bed to comfort Opal reveals tenderness naturally. Readers of Lee Smith would very much enjoy the warmth found in this Appalachian family portrait.