One of her first novels,
Listen for Rachel, "is the book of my heart," the author once noted, "because it gives a true picture of the proud, independent people who settled the Appalachians. That this book was selected for a cultural exchange program with Russia pleases me immensely."
Listen for Rachel was Kassem's attempt, as Harris noted, at "dispelling the caricatures of Appalachia."
The protagonist of Listen for Rachel is fourteen-year-old Rachel Sutton, who has recently lost her parents in a fire. The novel is set during the American Civil War, and Rachel must go to live with her grandparents in the Tennessee mountains. At first resistant to Appalachian ways and customs, she ultimately becomes a medicine woman, taking after her neighbor, Granny Sharp, and learning the traditional mountain medicine. She takes care of pregnant women and sick farmers, riding through the hills to scattered homesteads. When Granny dies, Rachel takes over the older woman's work single-handed. At the end, Rachel falls in love with a Yankee soldier and a proposal seals her future. Following Rachel from her youth to early womanhood, the novel presents a balanced picture of Appalachia.
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