Cold Sassy Tree is a historical novel set in the fictional town of Cold Sassy of Georgia in the United States in the first decade of the twentieth century. It was written by Olive Ann Burns, and was her first work. When Burns wrote the novel, she was suffering from chronic lymphoma and was also sixty years old. The book was published in November 1984 and soon was highly acclaimed by the critics. As Carolyn See reviewed the book in the Los Angeles Times, “Olive Burns, in this publication process, became a cash cow. She had created a wow of a book, and the book--her readers and her publishers decided--demanded a sequel”. An incomplete sequel followed in 1992, under the title Leaving Cold Sassy, but Burns did not live long enough to see its publication.
According to several critics the fictional town of Cold Sassy was based on an actual place known as Harmony Grove, nowadays known as Commerce. The story takes us back to July 1906, telling the tale of an overtly energetic Mr Enoch Rucker Blakeslee whose wife Mattie Lou has just died. After three weeks of mourning, Blakeslee announces that he is going to marry the milliner in his store Miss Love Simpson, to whom he is some thirty years senior.
Blakeslee’s daughters Mary Willis and Loma, as well as the townsfolk of Cold Sassy, highly disapprove the ensuing marriage, citing the difference in age, and saying that it would be improper to get married when the previous wife Mattie Lou has died only three weeks earlier. Gossips and rumours spread about the small town fast, but one person still supports the marriage: the grandson of Mr Blakeslee. His name is Will Tweedy, a boy just fourteen years old, who is the main narrator of the story. In other words, the story is told from the perspectives of Will Tweedy and in the course of his life journey, the text goes on to explore various issues like death, social taboos, and religion.
Death is probably the most prominent image in Cold Sassy Tree as the novel both begins and ends with deaths: at the opening, we hear that Blakeslee’s wife Mattie Lou has died, and the book concludes with Rucker’s own death. These incidents provide the narrator of the story, Will Tweedy, the scope and the catalyst to ponder over serious philosophical issues like including death, the meaning of life, and the justness of God as claimed by the Christian religion. Here, the shadows of existentialism or even a Camus-like Absurdity start brooding over the text, and the shadows deepen when Will Tweedy almost dies himself. At a very young age Will concludes that God does not interfere with human mortality nor does he change their destiny, rather He gives them the courage to endure it. This seems to echo the words of Rabindranath Tagore where he writes “I pray not to save me from dangers; let not dangers intimidate me instead” (self-translated from Bengali).
The novel can also be read as an allegory of the small town Cold Sassy’s shift from Victorianism to Modernity. At the very beginning we can see that they are quite orthodox as they condemn the hasty marriage between Mr Blakeslee and Miss Simpson. Also, a town located in the far South, the townsfolk are also disapproving of the ways of the North as they do not favor Miss Simpson who has come from the Northern part of the country. The people of Cold Sassy seem to have their doors closed to new people and new ideas. However, things begin to improve as time passes and the novel progresses. At the end we can see that the tree from which the name of the place originated (thereby a symbol or an objective correlative of the orthodoxy of Cold Sassy) must be cut down to make way for the railways (which is a clichéd symbol of progress and modernization).
In 1989, the novel was adapted for a television feature film of the same title, directed by Joan Tewkesbury. The film adaptation was penned by Karen Croner, and the principal actors and actresses included Faye Dunaway (As Miss Love Simpson), Richard Widmark (Enoch Rucker Blakeslee), Frances Fisher (As Loma Williams), and Neil Patrick Harris (As Will Tweedy). The movie was rated 6.2 out of 10 in the IMDB.
