- Hardcover: 369 pages
- Publisher: Harcourt (May 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0151001642
- ISBN-13: 978-0151001644
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 14.2 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
Butterfly Weed
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
The raucous and poignant story of Doc Swain describes how he becomes a physician without attending medical school, his ability to heal patients with the "dream cure," his pursuit by a student and a music teacher from the high school at which he teaches, and the heartbreaking choices he must make.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
About the Author
Although he was born and raised in Little Rock, Donald Harington spent nearly all of his early summers in the Ozark mountain hamlet of Drakes Creek, his mother's hometown, where his grandparents operated the general store and post office. There, before he lost his hearing to meningitis at the age of twelve, he listened carefully to the vanishing Ozark folk language and the old tales told by story-tellers. His academic career is in art and art history and he has taught art history at a variety of colleges, including his alma mater, the University of Arkansas. His first novel was published by Random House in 1965, and since then he has published twelve other novels, most of them set in the Ozark hamlet of his own creation, Stay More, based loosely upon Drakes Creek. He has also written books about artists. He won the Robert Penn Warren Award in 2003, the Porter Prize in 1987, the Heasley Prize at Lyon College in 1998, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 1999 and that same year won the Arkansas Fiction Award of the Arkansas Library Association. He has been called "an undiscovered continent" (Fred Chappell) and "America's Greatest Unknown Novelist" (Entertainment Weekly).
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
I simply cannot believe that Harington himself and this book in particular are not more well-known. The strange lives and happenings in the fictional town of Stay More are never anything less than utterly entertaining. Harington's use of Ozarkian dialects really makes the characters pop out--they often say the darnedest things! One of his other books, "The Choiring of the Trees," is also an excellent read. I recommend them both with equal enthusiasm.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Brilliant
21 Mar 2001
Format:Hardcover
This book is incredible. It's written from the perspective of Vance Randolph, a famous Ozarks folkorist in real life, as he is telling it to Mr. Harington. There's more than a couple humorous references to Randolph's work, notably Pissing in the Snow, which is a collection of Ozark sexual folklore, and it's a pretty damn imaginative premise. Which serves well to describe the book itself. It's set in the unfortunately-fictional town of Stay More, in real, breathtaking Newton County, Arkansas. It is the story of one Doctor Colvin Swain, born and raised in Newton County, culminating in a beautiful romance. Harington never ceases to keep me reading, and beyond being a pleasure to read, it's often painful to pause. It's gripping. The majority of the Doc's story is a hilarious, libidinous, pastoral narrative told in past tense, which switches to the present and then future tense, which Harington does effectively, and with magnanimously powerful, emotionally resonant results. It's one hell of a book. I wouldn't hesitate to rate it up there with the best of anyone from Kesey to Steinbeck to Melville. It's that good.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Unexpectedly great & laugh-out-loud funny!
30 Oct 1998
Format:Paperback
I simply cannot believe that Harington himself and this book in particular are not more well-known. The strange lives and happenings in the fictional town of Stay More are never anything less than utterly entertaining. Harington's use of Ozarkian dialects really makes the characters pop out--they often say the darnedest things! One of his other books, "The Choiring of the Trees," is also an excellent read. I recommend them both with equal enthusiasm.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Laugh-out-loud funny, extremely well-written
15 April 2008
Format:Paperback
While some readers may find the storyline a little bawdy and maybe even a smidgen on the naughty side, BUTTERFLY WEED is a real literary treat and not to be missed. It is among Harington's best work. Set in the rural Arkansas Ozarks, readers are treated to the adventure-filled life story of Doc Swain, the venerable doctor of Stay More--that sleepy hamlet high in the mountains of Newton County at the center of most Harington novels.
Swain's popular medical practice involves, among other oddities, curing patients in his dreams! You'll meet the loves of his life, his family and foster father, his chief competitor, and of course the many other interesting characters of Stay More. His education in medicine and subsequent certification, we learn, are far from conventional.
The story is narrated by a real life historical collector of folktales, the late Vance Randolph, which makes for an interesting telling and an authentic dip into local vernacular.
Above all, this is a tale full of humor and magic and it will live in your soul for a good spell, long after that last page.
Swain's popular medical practice involves, among other oddities, curing patients in his dreams! You'll meet the loves of his life, his family and foster father, his chief competitor, and of course the many other interesting characters of Stay More. His education in medicine and subsequent certification, we learn, are far from conventional.
The story is narrated by a real life historical collector of folktales, the late Vance Randolph, which makes for an interesting telling and an authentic dip into local vernacular.
Above all, this is a tale full of humor and magic and it will live in your soul for a good spell, long after that last page.
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