Taps for Private Tussie

by Jesse Stuart
Category: "Fiction - General"
Pages:303
Year of Publication:1943
Date Added:02/26/2021
Date Read:06/26/2023
Notes:Armed Services Edition

Narrated by Sid, a teenager from a poor family in the mountains of Kentucky who lives with his grandparents. The story opens with the funeral of Uncle Kim, killed in the war. His widow, Vittie, moves in with Sid's grandparents and their son Mott who live in an empty schoolhouse but are being evicted by the county. Vittie gets some money for Kim's death and so the family rents a large house near town and fills it with furniture. As soon as they do, relatives come out of the woodwork and soon the house if full and the money is gone. They have to move again, this time to a small shack bought with the very last of Vittie's money. Mott wants to marry Vittie, but instead she marries the much older Uncle George, which makes Mott and George hate each other. Grandpa gets sick and is about to die. One evening, Mott shoots George's fiddle, so George kills Mott. Vittie, who was in town begging for groceries, comes home—with Kim, who wasn't dead after all. Mott had just claimed the dead body was Kim so he could marry Vittie. Kim tells Sid that Vittie is really his mother from before she married Kim.
My Rating: 6

Reviews for Taps for Private Tussie

Review - Taps for Private Tussie

Weird book with not much of a point but strangely compelling. Sid, who even as a kid, was disgusted with his Tussie relatives for never doing any work, is getting his life together at the end of the book—going to school, earning a little money, and finally finding out who he is. But even that just sorta ends with no resolution except that he feels "full of life." Just weird.

Reviewed by Roger on 2023-06-26 20:21:18

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