'On Agate Hill' is a mixed box of a novel

From: Sunday Gazette-Mail | Date: October 29, 2006| Author: Jamie Gumbrecht | Copyright information

"On Agate Hill" opens not with the rich descriptions expected from a Lee Smith novel but with a sloppy letter from Tuscany Miller to her one-time college professor.

The college dropout might have found a new topic for her thesis, she writes, something uncovered from a secret room in a North Carolina plantation: "I want to turn in this box of old stuff instead, see what you think! I believe you will be as exited as I am."

That "box of old stuff" contains the early diary of Molly ...

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`On Agate Hill' is a mixed box of a novel.
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