Review by Karen Bossick
The Wood River Journal, Ketchum, ID September 2004

“Soul of the Land” paints a portrait of early Idaho
Chan Atchley set out to write down a family history. But in time, it grew to become a much bigger story.
It grew to be a highly readable, even engrossing story of two brothers who make very different choices with very different endings. It grew to be a story of homesteaders trying to eek out a living for themselves and their families in an Idaho frequented by the extremes of blizzard and drought. And, above all, it grew to be a story of the land - a land whose beauty and power strengthens some and leaves others crying “Uncle.”

“It’s real life but it has a plot - the story of two brothers striving to reach their dream, a dream that revolves around the land” said Atchley. What makes a book good is that you have a hero or heroine who gets frustrated in their attempts to make their dreams come true and there’s a lot of that here. And you see what they did to try to overturn those frustrations.”

While cleaning out the attic of his mother’s home after her death, he found a treasure trove of letters, which he paired with court documents, homestead records from the National Archives and other research to flesh out the story.

“You don’t realize you’re reading history because you’re reading all these stories - it reads like a novel. It’s interesting to see the perseverance of each character - who’s strong, who’s weak. And you learn what life was really like - it was tough. Even the good wasn’t so good,” said Atchley’s daughter L.A. Frick.

The book, illustrated with old family photos, paints a moving portrait of grandfather Atchley’s attempts to scrub out land for farming an acre at a time. It also shares the noble - J.A.’s eagerness to try the latest farm equipment to see if it’ll help improve he and his neighbors’ lot in life, but it also includes the ignoble - J.A.’s illegitimate child.

Though it’s been a century since his grandfather settled in Idaho, Atchley can identify with his grandfather’s deep seated desire to own and farm a piece of ground.

“I grew up on the farm and was obsessed with the vision of owning it. But it’s difficult to make a living off the land,’ he said. Those who succeed - you have to take your hat off to them.”

Atchley’s wife Judith designed the cover of his book, using pulps, fibers and grasses from the land to create an abstract picture that depicts dried corn stalks, broken down fences, even a farm implement or teepee, depending on how you look at it. The back cover features a picture of Atchley’s grandfather’s foot stone and his great grandfather’s headstone with the Teton Mountains in the background.
 

Review by Amy Christensen
Idaho State Journal, Pocatello, ID September, 2004

‘Soul’ is a biography with a twist
What’s the common ground between a good biography and a soap opera? Moving the plot along solely on the strength of the characters instead of an underlying statement the author wishes to make. With a well-written biography you feel swept along as a friend instead of witnessing as a voyeur.

“The Soul of the Land,” by Chan Atchley, is a biography with a twist. Atchley has taken family tales worn with re-telling and independently recorded historical facts and combined them into a book of creative non-fiction.

While the book falls prey to a common failing of almost all biographies - an abundance of secondary characters with little to differentiate them - the story moves forward on the strength of the central relationship between the brothers. Atchley’s grandfather and great-uncle. J.A. and John Atchley come from the south, dirt poor and hoping to make lives for themselves through homesteading near Ashton, Idaho.

Forged in a harsh childhood without the support of their father, and having lost their mother to an early death, the bond between brothers is as strong as the young men’s backs. We quickly get to know the brothers, their temperaments and their failings. J.A. as the older brother is responsible, determined and worried about John. John is younger and just as determined to get out of an impossible existence in Tennessee, but he lacks his brother’s single-minded desire to homestead.

What follows is how the lives of two men bound by blood and experience unfold in very different ways.
Atchley has so filled their story with richly textured emotion - pain, sweat, work, children, love, worry, joy and sweat - that it is hard to remember this is both history and based in fact. As J.A. is clearing his first bit of land and building a cabin with John’s help, the reader is with them in the middle of winter asking the same question as John. “Lordy,” John said, as he pushed through the snow to the opposite side (of the tree they’re cutting down for the cabin), “is there no way to git out of this snow?”

As readers, we feel elation as the plow bites into the first clump of sod J.A. clears to plant; we walk home with John, the wind chewing the flesh off our backs as he wonders how to tell his family that their only automobile is broken down beyond repair; and we share the worry of the brothers when no rain has come for the spring planting and the dust runs like silk through fingers.

For anyone who has grown up in southeast Idaho, or who has taken the time to get to know the area, it is invigorating to find nestled in pages, place names that bring memories to mind; valleys, rivers, towns and canals. And for those of us with families and histories here, Atchley offers an even richer treat - imagining our own grandfathers, grandmothers, great-aunts and their numerous children sliding through this same landscape. You turn each page waiting to see your great-grandfather in the role of classmate or friend.
The true strength of this epic is the recounting of one man’s family. Atchley’s ability to bring the reader into the lives of these people in a way that is far from superficial, and is instead like a natural extension of our own family history. It is a gift not often found in studying history.

By the end of the reading, history is something not lost to the gray-toned past, but is as present as our next breath, and just as relevant.
 

Review by Dana Dugan
Idaho Mountain Express, Sun Valley, ID September, 2004

HOMESTEADING BOOK AUTHOR VISITS
Iconoclast Books in Ketchum hosted a regional writer who sheds light on the hardships of homesteading in Idaho in the early 1900s.

Author Chan Atchley, was raised in Southeastern Idaho. He is the grandson of J.A. Atchley, who left Tennessee as a teenager in 1901. The area where J.A. and his brother John settled, near Marysville, was one of the last virgin areas in the United States settled under the Homestead Act of 1862.

Atchley’s historical book, “The Soul of the Land” follows the lives of the brothers and their families as they toil to achieve the great American dream of becoming successful landowners in the foothills of the Tetons. The two brothers and their families struggled to survive amidst dreams and droughts and eventually were separated on different paths.

The book was self-published earlier this year by Aspen’d Publishing. The original cover art is by Atchley’s wife, Judith, a well known artist.

Strong in historical details and a sense of place, “Soul of the Land” is enlivened by photos, genealogy trees, letters and memories from members of both the Atchley and Shults families. The latter were the family of his grandmother, Rachel. Anecdotes regard everything from births and deaths to tales of farming, camping, fishing, hunting and marriage. Not much is spared, though Atchley can only go where he is led.

The book is a good yarn though and one finds while reading a constant checking with photos and family trees is necessary. Atchley genuinely brings his relatives alive, like an addictive soap opera in our backyard. He is currently at work on a sequel.
 

Review by Melanie White
Jackson Hole News & Guide, Jackson, WY September, 2004

Originally, Chan Atchley intended to flesh out the story of both his grandparents’ migrations from “dirt poor” Tennessee to Idaho in the wake of the 1862 Homestead Act. But with the accumulation of handed-down anecdotes, historical research and creative invention, Atchley decided to split the story in two.

The Soul of the Land is a creative non-fiction retelling of two brothers-Atchley’s grandfather and great uncle-and their attempts to wrench a living from the virgin territory of the West. Confronting drought, flu epidemics, prohibition and the great depression, one brother overcame the challenges of frontier living, while the other floundered.

The ”struggle to own the land” constitutes the heart of the book, and Atchley quotes Margaret Mitchell to underscore his theme: “Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything, for ‘tis the only thing in the world that lasts...’Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for - worth dying for.”
 

Review by Elizabeth Laden
Publisher and Editor of the Award Winning - Island Park Press
Island Park, ID July 2004

"The Soul of the Land" is an honest, well-written, highly readable history drawn from primary and secondary source material and well illustrated with photographs. Chan adds his own vivid and insightful imagination to the story, using dialog to make the characters come alive.

The story centers on brothers–J.A. and John–who homestead land in Idaho. They’re both interesting characters, but J.A., Chan’s grandfather, has heroic qualities while John never seems able to meet a challenge and overcome it without J.A.’s help. J.A. lets the land’s beauty and power and strength shape his character: John surrenders to its unforgiving harshness.

J.A. never refuses anyone who needs financial help or advice. He is the quintessential father of a family, always nurturing the best in people while overlooking mistakes and flaws. Sometimes, he does this to a fault–tough love is not in his character. He loves farming so much that he wants everyone to share his love of the land and the best tools and most innovative ideas needed to make a living. The many descriptions of farm implements and practices are a special part of this book.

Chan describes hardships that are hard to imagine today. Homesteaders did not just walk into a fertile valley and start planting seeds. They had to clear the land and work it to make it productive adding tillable acres year by year until they were able to make a decent income–providing the weather held and there was a market.

One of the most touching incidents is when J.A. and John start homesteading, after running away from their home in Tennessee. They spend a winter in a tent, building a log cabin around the tent, using a horse to haul the logs one at a time. The readers feels their pain as the cabin grows inch by inch, and is finally completed in spring. Many readers will relate to some of the winter hardships Chan describes because we still face them today.

The challenges and hard work make J.A. a strong character who gives back to his family, agriculture, and the community. He develops and encourages the use of farming methods and machinery that enable him and other farmers in the area to be more productive. When his successful farming leaves him time, he serves the community in other ways. We always hear about military men and women doing things that make them heroes, and the modern world likes to think that athletes and movie stars are heroes. But folks like J.A. are true heroes, spending a lifetime serving others and showing others life’s deeper meanings and values.

The book’s cover was designed by Chan’s wife, Judith, an artist whose work is in many worldwide private collections and galleries. The back cover shows the Teton mountain range from the cemetery not far from the original homestead and the front of the book is a reproduction of a work that retains its three dimensional aspect in the limited edition Gicl’ee prints.

The Soul of the Land should be valued as a local, regional and national treasure.