Jayne Moore Waldrop’s linked story collection Drowned Town deftly explores the changing landscape of the western Kentucky and its impact on those living there.
The Southern Review of Books wrote of the book:
“As with the shifting Kentuckian landscape, Drowned Town treats its audience to the ebbing and flowing of emotions that come with forging and embodying a sense of identity through place. Like A Wall of Bright Dead Feathers and The Big Empty, Waldrop’s ode to an America of yore doesn’t shy away from depicting how melancholy can make nostalgic folks prone to being out of touch with reality. But as the moments of levity and environmental observation demonstrate, the book also never loses sight of the joys of inhabiting a land that feels like ‘a thin place that more closely connected heaven to earth, water to land, past to present.”
In her own words, here is Jayne Moore Waldrop’s Book Notes music playlist for her story collection Drowned Town:
Drowned Town is about the ebb-and-flow of water, rivers, lives, time, and stories. My playlist reflects that back and forth in eras, genres, and moods.
Drowned Town is fiction set against historical events in western Kentucky and Tennessee when several old towns along the Cumberland River were lost or relocated to higher ground for the construction of Barkley Dam in the 1960s. The dam and its resulting reservoir, Lake Barkley, were designed to improve flood control, navigation, and hydroelectric power generation. Just a few years earlier and a couple of miles east, a dam on neighboring Tennessee River had created Kentucky Lake, one of the largest human-made reservoirs east of the Mississippi River. Between the lakes, another 170,000 acres were taken in the 1960s under the federal government’s power of eminent domain to create a national recreation area known as Land Between the Lakes (LBL).
The creation of Kentucky Lake, Lake Barkley, and LBL brought monumental environmental and cultural change to the region, dislocating thousands of Kentucky and Tennessee residents and taking away communities, livelihoods, and history. The impact of loss of home and place is generational. Drowned Town shifts back and forth in time and place to explore multiple viewpoints of loss and the universal tug to find one’s place in the world. Today, if you look closely along the lakes’ edges or in the place formerly known as Between the Rivers, signs of what used to be can be seen. There’s a pervasive seen-and-unseen quality about the landscape.
Western Kentucky and west Tennessee aren’t the only places to experience such monumental change in landscape and geography. Many parts of the country have also experienced loss of place, due to similar TVA or U.S. Army Corps of Engineers projects, the construction of interstate highways, or the creation of national parks. Many communities have come to know this loss from natural disasters like tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. The loss is real, and so is the yearning for home.
Oh Cumberland – Matraca Berg
I love everything about this song, a close conversation with the river itself that conjures a beautiful, intimate, and fundamental sense of place. The Cumberland and its Lake Barkley impoundment are more than settings in my book. They become characters.
Wayfaring Stranger
This powerful song connects to Drowned Town’s themes of displacement, homecoming, and belonging. The yearning for home is at the heart of this song, thought to be a reworked Black spiritual or having roots in Scots-Irish southern Appalachia. Frankly, I couldn’t choose between the versions by Rhiannon Giddens (with Francesco Turrisi) and Johnny Cash so I’m including them both as bookends to represent various female and male characters and their quests for home.
Orange and Blue – Sarah Jarosz
This evocative song matches many of the themes in Drowned Town, especially the fever dream of vivid memories about a place and a search for a thing that can’t be found. The book begins with Cam returning as an adult to view the remnants of her childhood hometown. The old river town was demolished and partially submerged with the completion of Barkley Dam in 1965. She finds a familiar shape to the earth, but that’s about all she recognizes. The song also beautifully speaks to a search for a heart that burns so true/burning orange and blue, the colors found in a hot flame.
Paradise – Live – John Prine
How many times have I driven the West Kentucky Parkway, crossed the Green River bridge into Mullenberg County, and thought of John Prine? A book about western Kentucky needs music that actually mentions the place by name in the first lines. “Paradise” is one of the best songs ever written about an idyllic place that no longer exists. The song is an anthem to the powerlessness of ordinary people against the powers-that-be, whether that authority comes in the form of Mr. Peabody’s coal company or the government’s own power of eminent domain. Many people in the Between the Rivers area experienced a feeling of powerlessness when their lost their land to the national recreation area project.
The Way I Talk – S.G. Goodman
Since the book is set in Kentucky and Tennessee, I wanted a playlist that authentically represents the area. Singer and songwriter S.G. Goodman is a native western Kentuckian who writes about present-day life in the region, from a celebration of the land to unfair treatment of workers, from prejudice against rural people to the beauty of love. Her album Old Time Feeling was produced by another talented Kentuckian, Jim James of My Morning Jacket.
The Bitch is Back – Tina Turner
This song may be the best way to introduce the character Margaret, who comes into the narrative as a most unlikeable you-know-what. The people who work for her most likely sing this song behind her back. I chose Tina Turner’s cover of the Elton John hit in memory of Turner and her childhood home in Nutbush, a rural unincorporated community in west Tennessee, just fifty miles from Memphis.
I’m Prison Bound – John Lee Hooker
One of Drowned Town’s characters is an inmate at the Kentucky State Penitentiary, aka The Castle on the Cumberland. Lester watches from inside as the old river town of Eddyville is demolished to make way for the rising waters of the new reservoir. The maximum-security prison remains the dominant feature of this drowned town.
Down to the River to Pray – Alison Krauss
The song has been described as a hymn, a spiritual, a Native American chant, and an Appalachian standard. Regardless of its roots, it’s a song about keeping one’s faith in a time of darkness. The Alison Krauss cover is from O Brother Where Art Thou, the 2000 movie based on three escaped prisoners’ journey to reclaim family, home, and treasure before the flooding of yet another town in the American South.
Moon River – Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn’s version of Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” is from the classic movie, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which was based on the Truman Capote novella. You may wonder how this song from a movie set in Manhattan fits into this playlist. Well, not only is the song beautifully evocative of a river, it also provides an element of urban-rural tension. When you think about it, there’s one big urban-rural tug-of-war contained in the character of Holly Golightly/Eula Mae. In Drowned Town, the urban-rural divide appears in the friendship between Cam (from a working-class family displaced when their rural Kentucky town flooded) and Margaret (from a privileged East Coast family transplanted to Louisville’s wealthiest enclave).
Backwater Blues – Kelsey Waldon
This song is about flooding, but it asks some bigger questions about recent natural disasters due to major weather events. A singer and songwriter who grew up near the Ohio River bottoms of western Kentucky, Kelsey Waldon knows from personal experience the reality of floods. She wrote and released this song shortly after devastating 2022 Kentucky floods, which came seven months after the 2021 tornadoes that destroyed the towns of Mayfield, Dawson Springs, and Bremen. Waldon said in an interview that “the message is one of empathy and the storyline is one of heartbreak, except this time Mother Nature is doing the breaking, over and over again. She is upset for good reason….”
My Darlin’ Hometown – John Prine
This tender song speaks about love of home in romantic terms, like the love of a partner whose arms one longs for. The yearning for home is universal, especially among displaced people.
Wildflowers – Tom Petty
This old favorite seems exactly right for the character Cam, whose simple wedding takes place in a chapel in the woods adorned in wildflowers.
We Are Family – Sister Sledge
The three main characters were children when the lake was created and the towns were flooded, which would have made them college students about the time this song was the highlight of any night at a disco. Its theme of family, whether chosen or by blood, echoes throughout the book.
Where Did You Sleep Last Night – Nirvana
This Nirvana Unplugged cover of an old southern Appalachian ballad hits the right notes of mystery and suspected violence for one of the Drowned Town stories, “Across the Creek.”
Cardinal – Kacey Musgraves
Traditionally a cardinal was thought to be a sign from a departed loved one. The haunting beauty of this song speaks to the mysterious feeling of receiving messages from the other side.
Nashville, TN – Chris Stapleton
Part of the book is set in Nashville, including a particularly low point in Margaret’s life. Her time of reckoning is summed up in this song by Kentuckian Chris Stapleton.
I’m So Lonesome – Hank Williams
This high lonesome sound also relates to Margaret’s time in Nashville, which is a turning point in her life.
If The Sun Never Rises Again – Johnny Blue Skies/Sturgill Simpson
Drowned Town is based on a history of loss and displacement, but it’s also about finding love, passion, and belonging in midlife. Johnny Blue Skies (aka Kentuckian Sturgill Simpson) brings on the passion.
Sweet Spot – Tift Merritt
This song speaks about moving from heartache and sorrow to find joy. Transformation of place and people is at the heart of the book, too.
All the Ways – The Secret Sisters, Ray LaMontagne
This one brims with love and passion. I can imagine it playing in the background for one scene in particular.
Hello in There – Jason Isbell
Drowned Town explores several forms of loss. The grieving of a loved one with dementia is captured in this Jason Isbell cover of John Prine’s touching song.
Uncloudy Day – Loretta Lynn
This old song appears in the book as one of the songs remembered by Rose when she visits the former site of her family home Between the Rivers. I chose the cover by Loretta Lynn from Letcher County, Kentucky, in memory of my late mother, who also grew up there. Like Rose, my mother was diagnosed with dementia late in life. My mother loved Loretta and could remember all the words to the song deep into her illness. There’s a personal connection to the song.
Blue Moon of Kentucky – Emmylou Harris, Ricky Skaggs
Another classic cover that includes Kentucky bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs.
Landslide – The Chicks
Stevie Nicks’ poignant lyrics are about change, longing, and the passage of time. Drowned Town’s narrative ebbs and flows through the changes in the landscape and through lifelong friendships between the main characters.
Space and Time – S.G. Goodman
S.G. Goodman writes about where’s she from with raw honesty. She pays tribute to love and community even when it doesn’t feel reciprocal with lines like these: I owe my life to even my enemies/the ones who have loved me/the ones who have tried. There’s recognition that people and places aren’t always perfect, but they help hold life together.
Crowded Table – The Highwomen (Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, Amanda Shires)
If there were ever a song about love and belonging, it’s this one.
Jayne Moore Waldrop, a western Kentucky native, is the author of Retracing My Steps, a finalist in the 2018 New Women’s Voices Chapbook Contest, and Pandemic Lent: A Season in Poems. Waldrop’s work has appeared in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Still: The Journal, Appalachian Review, New Madrid Review, Deep South Magazine, New Limestone Review, Women Speak, and other literary journals. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky.