CURTISS, Huston 1922(?)-

PERSONAL: Born c. 1922, in Elkins, WV.

ADDRESSES: Home—Los Angeles, CA. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Harmony Books, Random House, Inc., 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Writer.

WRITINGS:

Sins of the Seventh Sister: A Memoir of the GothicSouth, Harmony Books (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: In Sins of the Seventh Sister: A Memoir of the Gothic South, a book that seems to be part biography and part tall-tale, Huston Curtiss presents his memoir of growing up in an eccentric family in Elkins, West Virginia, during the late 1920s and beyond. But it is a family story with a twist, a book that "makes a claim on being the oddest book of the year," wrote Bob Powers on the Marietta Times Web site. Having decided that the book was "simply too wild to be sold as a memoir," publisher Harmony Books decided to reclassify Sins of the Seventh Sister as a work of fiction. "Fearful he would not be believed, on one hand, but desirous of the freedom to embellish, on the other," Curtiss tells his story in a book he characterizes as "a novel based on a true story of the gothic south," according to a description of the book on the Crown Publishing Group Web site.

"It is a rare treat to open a book and find yourself enthralled by it from the very first page," wrote a reviewer for the Celebrity Web Cafe. "Huston Curtiss gives his readers this gift in his first book, Sins of the Seventh Sister." The book is reconstructed largely from meticulous diary entries from 1929, when Curtiss (then known as Hughie) was seven years old. His mother, the gorgeous, vivacious, and strong-willed Billy-Pearl—one of eleven children and the blonde "Seventh Sister" of the title—struggles to raise her family in difficult times. When Hughie's "trifling skunk of a father runs off, consumed with self-pity and syphilis," Billy-Pearl assumes leadership of the family, wrote Kevin Allman in the Washington Post. But Billy-Pearl "has a knack for attracting the desperate and destitute," noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer. She welcomes into her house black families that have been burned out by the KKK, a homeless schoolteacher, and two boys abused by their father. In addition to housing the desperate and destitute, Billy-Pearl takes up her rifle to protect the helpless and extract a little revenge, where necessary. She kills the abusive father of the two boys she takes in. She shoots a Klansman intent on doing harm to a black family, and is acquitted of attempted murder in the shooting—since she is the best shot in the county, she reasons to the court, if she had intended to kill the man he would have indeed been dead.

Billy-Pearl also welcomes to the family the character Allman considers "the book's other linchpin: Stanley, Hughie's adoptive brother," who is expected to arrive and help with the family's horses. But Stanley carries a secret: he had watched his abusive father kill his mother, and in his grief and rage murdered his father at age ten; as a result, Stanley was castrated by state authorities "in an attempt to contain his violent impulses," Allman wrote. Billy-Pearl's eye for the ragtag settles on Stanley, and she "sets out to be the parent he never had," according to Allman.

Curtiss explains that Stanley grew up to be a star at the Metropolitan Opera, suggesting that Stanley became diva Stella Roman. Roman's known biography and history, however, does not jibe with Curtiss's account. Other people, places, and events in Curtiss's "memoir" are equally difficult to account for in the real-life historic record. Curtiss mentions sensational trials that cannot be verified; he refers to shows by performers of the time that are known to have not taken place. A Kirkus Reviews critic remarked that "The ratio of tall-tale to reality on page after page is distressingly unclear." However, Allman warns that "looking too closely at any of this entertaining story would be a mistake."

In spite of any complaints about the veracity of the book, the octogenarian Curtiss "writes with skill and a welcome sense of humor," Powers observed. Sins of the Seventh Sister, wrote Allman, "is like an extended visit from an eccentric uncle who unrolls all the best family stories like a fascinating patchwork quilt; no matter how many tales he relates and how far they stretch credulity, you always wish he would tell just one more."