Whippoorwills Only Sing at Night

Whippoorwills Only Sing at Night evokes a time and place that will be forever etched in the memory of those who lived through the Great Depression in rural Kentucky. The story centers around eleven-year-old Tray Davenport growing up in a closely-knit, isolated village where God matters and neighbors take care of one another. However, the killing of the local womanizing-bootlegger Check Spriggs, shatters the little community's peace. The man who did the killing, Vertries Mulberry, said he shot Check for trying to steal his horses. But Tray overhears a conversation in a barn in which Check boasts he is going to spend the night with Vertries' beautiful wife, Belinda.

Tray's father, Matt, is a close friend of Vertries. He promises to stand by him even if he is indicted for murder. Matt believes a man has the right to shoot a horse thief. After all, one couldn't make a living on the hard-scrabble farms in south central Kentucky without a team. When Tray tries to tell his father what he heard Check say, Matt does not take it seriously. But a few weeks later Belinda confesses to Minerva, Matt's wife, that she did indeed have an affair with Check and is carrying his baby. And that, she says, is the reason Vertries killed Check.

Now Matt must decide whether to tell the law what he knows, which could send his best friend to prison, or to keep silent and live with a guilty conscience. Matt's moral struggle, coupled with his heavy drinking, that leads to nearly knifing a neighbor following an argument over the killing, diminishes his standing in the eyes of his son. Tray has always wanted to grow up to be like his father--the best teamster in Cleary County. Now he begins to have second thoughts. When they bury Check Spriggs, they are burying more than a philandering bootlegger. They are also burying a little boy's innocence.

Selah Ridge, Ky., in 1939 could have been a Third World community: Mud roads. No electricity. Radios rare. No telephones. Travel done mainly in horse-drawn "jolt" wagons. Deaths announced by the tolling of the church bell. Water drawn from hand-dug wells. Food came from the land. Poverty was the great equalizer. But the hard times were lightened by revival meetings where sinners got saved and young people did some heavy courting, Decoration Day celebrations, all-day singings and dinner on the ground, and chilly fall sorghum "stir-of fs" where crowds gathered to scrape the huge boiling pan with their "lickin' paddles." Young boys often spent Sunday afternoons playing "cob war" in the barn lofts. Times were hard but even difficult days can be a delight when leavened by love and spiced by humor and grace.