Tragedy In Tin Can Holler by Rozetta Mowery (May 2007)

“Our fathers have sinned…and we have borne their iniquities.” -Lamentations 5:7 (King James Bible)
Review by Kim Cantrell

I’m foregoing the usual Friday Fiction this week, to review Rozetta Mowery’s Tragedy In Tin Can Holler.

As many of you know, I not only have a passion for true crime, but I am a history buff and enjoy genealogy.

Yet I’m often a hold-out when it comes to memoirs and/or first time authors.

But the setting of this book being in Athens, Tennessee, a city not too far from my own home in Middle Tennessee, intrigued me and set those reservations aside.

And I’m glad I did.

Mowery’s memoir is based on her own upbringing in the poverty stricken community formerly known as Tin Can Holler in McMinn County. 

The basis of Mowery’s story actually starts in the middle with her mother’s brutal death at the hands of her father; a man with a jaded history and lengthy criminal record.

Mowery is one of the couple’s six children (seven total) that would bounce in and out of foster homes until reaching adulthood.

But the legacy and hardships created by their father would linger despite his absence from their lives.

In 2006, after suffering domestic violence at the hand of two husbands, bearing the heartbreak from the deaths of four siblings, and watching as history was repeating itself with her nieces and nephews, Mowery began a journey to understand it all.

In this 200+ page book, readers are given a bird’s eye view into life in the shadow of the Great Smoky Mountains; an area that is part of the southern most range of the Applachians which is frequently associated with incest, poverty, and limited education.

I experienced a host of emotions – disgust, sadness, anger, happiness – as I read about a family that appeared to be cursed for as much as eight generations.

Before choosing to read Tragedy In Tin Can Holler, I had read the Amazon reviews; one which stated that the writing was “rough.” 

In a sense, that is so.   Mowery’s book is an unedited, extremely raw story.  “Rough” writing blends in with who she is and where she came from.  That rough-around-the-edges style is part of the dialect and makes the book that much more authentic.

If you are put off by hillbilly jargon and clichés, like your crime all prettied-up, or don’t like memoir-style writing, then this book isn’t for you.

But if you’re interested in historical true crime and the effects it has on the generations that follow, you’ll definitely want to read Rozetta Mowery’s Tragedy In Tin Can Holler.