The Bridge Crew is the story of a group of kids growing up in a Blue Ridge mountain village in the 1940’s and 50’s. This was a time before television, video games, personal computers and personal automobiles. Adults labeled them the “bridge crew” for their meeting place on the pedestrian walkway underneath the canopy of a huge sycamore tree in the center of town. There the kids met to plan their “activities” which included such antics as building huge spider webs on the bridge from Horace Isenhower’s waste socks from his tiny hosiery mill to oiling the tracks to watch the “Virginia Creeper” attempt to leave the Warrensville depot. The Bridge Crew demonstrates the creativity of youth who never realized they were poor until the government began telling them.
Nora, a farmer's wife wounded by wounded by accusation and impending upheaval. Roland, a husband chaffed by feelings of failure and restlessness. Jeremiah, an outcast haunted by his own past and by a secret obsession. These are the characters whose lives intertwine in Drops of the Night, an Appalachian tale of marital disillusionment, illicit desire, and self-redemption.
The author's family had one of the first houses in the Sandbridge section of Virginia Beach, Virginia. It was not on the ocean, but it was close enough so that at night, the best time for storytelling, residents could hear the waves breaking against the beach, and the wind whistling around the house. When the grown-ups were reading or playing cards, children would sit beside their grandmother and listen to her ghost stories. With the sounds of the waves breaking and the wind sighing, and with few lights from other houses so that the night was very dark, children would get as close to their grandmother as they could and try not to look toward one of the windows where, they were certain, they might see a ghostly face looking in. The stories in this book are ones that were told during those summers by the much-loved grandmother.
The Bed She Was Born In is the stirring account of five women, three black and two white, who while men marched off to war--and their deeds were recorded in history books--were unsung heroines affecting social and political change.
At a time when men marched off to war and their deeds were recorded in history books, unsung heroines went about their daily lives without the slightest idea they were affecting social and political change. The Bed She Was Born In is the stirring account of five such women-three black and two white-whose intimate relationships unravel past assumptions about segregation, even as they weave the intricate tapestry that is the American South.
It is March of 1865, and Adaire Sanderson prepares to defend her home, Sand Hill Farm, against Union forces at Bentonville, N.C. With the help of her life-long, and formerly enslaved, companion Ludie Sanders, Adaire disguises herself in her dead husband's uniform to search for her young son . . . a journey that takes her into the deadly center of the last major battle of the Civil War.
It is April of 1885, and Ludie Sander's 23-year-old daughter, Millie, crosses a creek and comes face-to-face with the bore of a long-barreled pistol. Even though her brutal attacker is discovered, Millie's life is forever changed . . . and the consequences damage the relationship between the black, and the white family, at Sand Hill Farm.
It is June of 1903, and Anna McLean, a talented musician and painter, moves to Sand Hill Farm. Anna, Adaire, Ludie and Millie form an alliance that carries them through the twisted revelations of an elopement that ends in tragedy . . . a forbidden liaison that binds both the families in silence for the next forty years.
It is November of 1917, and Anna McLean Sanderson defies her husband and organizes a woman's suffrage group in her home in Baker, N.C. Later, she and Millie turn their attention to several black children who are orphaned when their mother dies of a self-induced abortion. Ironically, Anna learns the details of how her beloved sister-in-law has attempted the same.
It is July of 1932, and Maddie Gaston emerges from the filth of a cattle car where she has secretly traveled for three days. Hunger forces her to search the town of Baker, N.C. for "the sign"- a cross carved on a doorpost that will let her know someone cares. She discovers the sign at Anna Sanderson's house, where she is fed and offered a job… and her fate is tied, thereafter, to that of Anna and Millie.
The Bed She Was Born In unfolds in riveting scenes of courage, compassion, and endurance. Chance brings these women together, but a spiritual covenant of love and trust enables them to overcome betrayal, violence, and the debilitating effects of racism and sexism in a turbulent era of American history.
The Bed She Was Born In is nominated for 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and the Southern Independent Bookseller's Alliance 2007 Award for Fiction.
This novel appeals both to Northerners who have moved to the South and to Southerners who must live with them. Set in the mid-1980, Our Kinfolks portrays two families living next to each other in a small mountain cove called Corn Still. Although the adults clash over their beliefs, their 14-year-old sons soon become good friends. This novel portrays the boys’ relationship, their adventures, and tribulations in growing up. There are, of course, complications: the Northern family stirs things up with the local political structure, a danger follows the family from the North, and the health of one of the boys deteriorates. All of the problems get resolved in a heart-warming, unexpected and suspenseful ending. The novel, full of diverse characters and situations, gives a rich, believable, and humorous portrayal of small towns and country living.
Many ghost stories from the coast and the mountains of North Carolina have been published, but not so many from the Piedmont section of North Carolina. In part, this book is an effort to correct that omission and to preserve the folklore and legends of the Piedmont section of the state of North Carolina, and the larger area of the Yadkin River Valley. This work is an attempt to preserve some of the legends, the folklore, and the strange and unusual occurrences from the land of the Yadkin River Valley. Frances Casstevens is the author of numerous books such as Heritage of Yadkin County, North Carolina, Yadkin County, North Carolina: The First One Hundred Years, and The Civil War and Yadkin County, North Carolina.
Going Home Zion covers a time period from early May, l984, until the middle of July, not very long for the typical novel, yet long enough to include Ed Israel’s return to his home village of Zion, in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina after an absence of 15 years; enough time to discover that his elderly father is dying of cancer in the living room of the Israel home, which has been arranged into a makeshift hospital room with a night and a day caretaker tending him; to learn the old man is suffering the delusion that Edward, “his only begotten son,” is missing in action in Vietnam and he is waiting to die in peace till his son returns from a war that has ended years before. Ed also learns that his mother, a teacher and Shakespearean scholar, has died years before; that his childhood playmate and high school girl friend Sheva York, still lives next door alone, her parents having died and her brother, Jack York, Ed’s high school football teammate, having been killed long ago by “friendly fire” in Vietnam.
Ivy: Camp Branch to Groveton is a sequel to Ivy: Yankee Sweetheart, Rebel Nurse. The sequel explores the relationships between Ivy Rowland, Seth Wommack, and Joseph Morgan and the effects of war on these relationships. The author, Larry Morgan, had a distinguished career in the field of education. He attended Colfax Union School in Guilford County where he was a star basketball athlete. He attended High Point University. He taught at various schools before becoming the principal of Nantahala School, his alma mater and which his father helped build. He is the author of Mountain Born, Mountain Molded, Appalachian Mountain Memories, Old Time Religion in the Southern Appalachians, and Ivy: Yankee Sweetheart, Rebel Nurse.
Ivy: Yankee Sweetheart Rebel Nurse by
Larry G. Morgan
Set during the Civil War, this is the story of Ivy Rowland who falls in love with and is betrothed to Seth Wommack, a handsome Union Army calvary officer. When her betrothed goes off to war, Ivy becomes a nurse in the Confederate Army, and her father joins the rebel Corps. Ivy's father is killed during the war and Ivy believes that her betrothed has also been killed in battle. She then enters into a "conditional" marriage with Joseph Morgan, a young man who has fallen in love with Ivy and who will fight for the Confederacy. Her story takes a surprising turn when her betrothed re-enters her life.
Ashewood Falls mayor Johnston "Birddog" Farley was living the good life. He was running for a fourth term as mayor, unopposed. His realty company was in the process of sealing a very lucrative development deal which promised to bring a great deal of money into the mayor's coffers, and his bowling team was in first place. Then it all fell apart. This delightful novel is the second one by Jonathan Farlow. Farlow lives in Archdale, North Carolina.
What do golf, the blues and the Brown Mountain Light one of America’s oldest unsolved mysteries have in common? Teenage golfer Val Galloway, budding bluesman Bo Gaines, and science major Alan Delacruz join fources to find the answers to that and other questions in this coming-of-age tale. Part golf novel and part popular culture guidebook and western North Carolina travelogue, Night Lights is the humorous and endearing story of three kindred spirits from the South Brunswick Islands who search for the source of the elusive Brown Mountain Light during the summer of 2003 in the North Carolina High Country around Linville and Grandfather Mountain. Their search for the Light and what they ultimately find reveal much about our own fears and doubts in post-9/11 American but even more about undying hope and the resilience of the human spirit. Rahn and Timberley Adams are natives of North Carolina and teach at Watauga High School, Boone, North Carolina.
Southern Psycho Tales is a collection of twisted and gut-bustingly funny stories of Southern madness and mayhem. Jerry Leath Mills, author of The Dead Mule Rides Again, says, "I'd rather read these tales than eat shrimp & grits on Meeting Street or bourbon-drizzled pecan pie with cream whipped in the kitchen." Loyd Little, author of Smokehouse Jam and the PEN-Hemingway winner Parthian Shot, commented, "Strauch's stories are not the best of the South. They are better." Bland Simpson, who wrote Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals noted, "Strauch's entertainingly bizarre imagination soars in Southern Psycho Tales. ...Nowhere else will one find a woman in bondage to a beauty-parlor hair-dryer."
The Sound of Distant Thunder is a story of a brutal murder and a brutal revenge, but it is also a love story as old as the mountains that spawned it. There are seven major characters and each person tells a part of the story in a voice so clear that you are in those mountains from the moment you read the first words. One reviewer said, Jack, you done us proud. Jack R. Pyle is a storyteller, a writer whose works are as varied as mountain weather, who never tells the same tale twice, and whose pen always stabs into the truth behind the facade. The Sound of Distant Thunder was the Appalachian Writers Association Book of the Year in 1999.
After Many a Summer is an old-fashioned love story, one that picks at the scabs of modern-day life, but still retains the basic goodness that is inherent in us all. If you have ever felt that time and tide had kept you from reaching for the brass ring, and if you have ever wondered whether it was too late to try again, then Cassie Jeans story is a must-read. With After Many a Summer, Jack R. Pyle has written another Appalachian story, but this one is so unlike his award-winning The Sound of Distant Thunder that you find it difficult to believe that the same writer wrote both stories.
Roger Maris Died Yesterday:
A Collection of Short Stories by
Jon M. Young
A historic Yankees game, John F. Kennedys assassination, the first manned moon landing, a same-sex marriage, a womans decision about abortion, racial conflict, a mans dilemma about his dying uncle, and a preachers family held hostage by a pair of criminals are among the events described in this collection of short stories that examine -- sometimes seriously and at other time with humor -- themes of heroism, death, innocence, guilt, love, doubt, and faith. Set in various North Carolina locations, these stories present realistic characters in common situations facing questions of meaning and purpose in their lives. With recurring characters and overlapping events, the stories, taken as a whole, recount the storytellers quest for intellectual understanding and spiritual insight. Jon M. Young is a Professor of Humanities at Fayetteville State University in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he lives with his wife, Paula, and daughters, Elizabeth and Johanna. His family ties to the North Carolina mountains, his childhood in Charlotte, and his experiences in the eastern part of the state are all reflected in the stories included in this collection.
On one idyllic summer day, a van load of Middle Eastern men drive into rural Welbourne County arousing suspicion that they are terrorists. At the same time, Daniel McDaniel, a man struggling with both alcoholism and a crumbling marriage, finds a derelict in his backyard. Despite a disheveled appearance and behavior that borders on bizarre, the vagrant claims to be Jesus Christ and, using some very unorthodox methods, begins to help Daniel get his life back on track. Both of these tales travel at a rollicking pace and come together in a side-splitting climax that will answer these provocative questions: Are there terrorists in Welbourne County? Has Jesus Christ come to walk the earth again? Is Daniel McDaniels wife cheating on him? Can Jesus play basketball? Jonathan Farlow was born and raised in Asheboro, N.C. and presently lives in Archdale, North Carolina with his wife Kathy and daughter Sara. He is employed at the Randolph County Public Library. Farlow earned bachelor degrees from Wingate College (now University) and a bachelors and a masters degree from UNC-Greensboro. Holy War is his first book.
John Foster West was born in 1918 near Champion Post Office (Wilkes County) in the foothills of western North Carolina. West, the son of a tenant farmer, attended eight public schools, graduating from Morganton (N.C.) High School. He taught English and creative writing at Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina. Time Was depicts life in Wilkes County, North Carolina. It is a reprint of an acclaimed novel.
The Rev. Jeffrey T. Peterson, an Episcopalian priest, facing a crisis of faith, leaves his ministry, his wife, and retreats to Valle Crucis. He is on a religious quest to revitalize his faith. Redemption comes to him in the form of Abby Dunbar, a beautiful English professor. With her irreverent wit and patient listening skills, Abby brings new life to the ex-priest. Dr. Rick Herrick, a former university professor and magazine editor, is the author of a novel, An Uncommon Woman. He lives and works in Valle Crucis, North Carolina.
Thank You for the Flowers is a collection of thirteen stories by Scott Nicholson. Nicholson won the 1999 Hubbard Gold Award and was First Runner-Up for the 1999 Darrell Award. Best-selling author Kevin J. Anderson says of Nicholson's blend of suspense and imagination: "He has a fresh and true voice that will affect you, disturb you, enrage you, or make you laugh. He will not, however, leave you cold."
Click HERE to see Scott Nicholson's schedule.
Letters from James: A High Country Love Story
by
Ruth Layng
James, a young Irishman, weary of war on the battlefields of France in the First Wold War, begins a correspondence with Jennie, the sister of his fellow soldier. Jennie lives in Zionville, North Carolina, and their letters depict both the horrors of war and the hardships and joys of life in the Appalachian mountains. There is malassy bilin' and a camp revival meeting and also the misery of illness and death during the influenza epidemic. John Foster West, Emeritus Professor of English, Appalachian State University, says, "It is a rare privilege to read the page proofs of a new novel so mature and so enjoyable you wish it would not end."
In the summer of 1974, 24-year-old Anna DeVoss finds herself widowed and alone in the unfamiliar country of the North Carolina mountains. Anna is persuaded by her mother-in-law to spend some time alone in the DeVoss family's summer home in Watauga County. It is a summer of discovery for Anna a time of learning about the mountains and about herself. John Foster West is the acclaimed author of books such as Lift up Your Head, Tom Dooley, The Ballad of Tom Dula, and Time Was. The Summer People is the winner of the first Appalachian Consortium Fiction Award.
An Uncommon is set in Valle Crucis, a tiny village in the beautiful mountains of western North Carolina. Carrie Presnell draws on her inner strength and courage to overcome a devastating rape and psychologically more devastating domestic violence. An Uncommon Woman is Carrie's story, which is about indomitable spirit of a survivor and the power of forgiveness to heal. It is also a story of her husband, Jesse, a batterer, who finds the courage to change because of his deep love for his wife.
This is a lighthearted detective story dressed in bib overalls. The time is 1933 and the place is a rural corner of Catawba County, North Carolina. There's been a murder at Gideon's Corner. Nearby is an abandoned and haunted roadhouse, the Moon Palace. A ghost is supposed to be guarding a hidden cache of money there. Uncle Henry takes it upon himself to prove there's no ghost in the old Moon Palace and his nephew sets out to find the money. The setting for the novel harks back to a time when society put great store in such things as honesty, fairness, and concern for others. It was a pleasant time to live - if only because life, albeit hard, was simple and easy to understand.
Gary Carden is a folklorist and storyteller. He was raised by his grandparents in a house filled with the past. He grew up listening to Grady Cole and Renfrow Valley on the radio while his grandfather tuned musical instruments with a tuning fork and sang hymns from a shape-note songbook. He grew up with cows, June apple trees, comic books, the Farmers' Federation and Saturday movies. He told his first stories to 150 white leghorn chickens in a dark chicken-house when he was six years old. His audience wasn't terribly attentive and tended to get hysterical during the dramatic parts.
Reviews:
Gary Carden is a national treasure--an Appalachian Garrison Keillor! Half the time, I can't decide whether to slap my knee or burst into tears! These stories are little miracles; sweet, sad, funny, and smart, all told in some of the loveliest language that's ever been put on a page. And I will never forget these characters.--Lee Smith
Mason Jars in the Flood by Gary Carden was named the Book of the Year for 2001 by the Appalachian Writers Association.
POETRY
Freedom in the Twenty-First Century
Poems
by
Marie Gilbert
In this collection of poems, Marie Gilbert presents her thoughts on freedom--its many aspects, choices, trusts, responsibilities, and changes of emphasis through generations.
Joseph Bathanti, born and raised in Pittsburgh, teaches Creative Writing at Appalachian State University. Bathanti is the author of four books of poetry: Communion Partners, Anson County, The Feast of All Saints, and This Metal. His first novel, East Liberty, won the 2001 Carolina Novel Award. He is the recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council; The Samuel Talmadge Ragan Award, presented annually for outstanding contributions to the Fine Arts of North Carolina over an extended period; the Linda Flowers Prize; the Sara Henderson Hay Prize, the 2002 Sherwood Anderson Award, and others.
Picking Clean the Bones Poems by Sally Atkins
and
Visual Art by Marianne S. Suggs
This work is a collaboration of word and image, of word as visual image and of visual image as a conjurer of words. It is a collaboration of two women who have shared many aspects of their lives in parallel time as mothers, wives, and teachers. Here is an artist whose work becomes political, a therapeutic role to the culture. Here is a therapist poet whose work has shaped itself toward the beauty of the personal/mystical. Sally Atkins is a poet, dancer, and ritualist. She is a Professor of Human Development and Psychological Counseling at Appalachian State University. Marianne Stevens Suggs is a mixed media artist who has exhibited nationally and regionally in juried and invitational exhibitions. She is a Professor of Art at Appalachian State University.
High Noon in Pompeii:
The Latter-Day Poetry of John Foster West by
John Foster West
The title of this book, High Noon in Pompeii, derives from both the title of the poem originally published in Southern Review and the subtitle, A Cenotaph for Guy Owen, who was a fellow-poet and dearest friend of John Foster West. A cenotaph is a monument honoring someone buried elsewhere, from the Greek word kenos (empty) and taphos (tomb). Thus, the poem is an empty tomb to a dead friend. Although there are poems with varied subjects in the collection, the title poem is in honor of the dead, whether they left us day-before-yesterday or 2,000 years ago. Many of the poems were originally published in magazines, literary quarterlies, and anthologies. John Foster West is the author of three novels. The first one, Time Was, was accepted by Random House, Inc. without an agent; the second, Appalachian Dawn, a sequel to Time Was; and The Summer People, winner of the first Appalachian Consortium Press Fiction Award. West has written three collections of poetry up ego, This Proud Land -- with the photography of Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Roberts --, and Wry Wine. He published two books dealing with the folklore of the Tom Dula and Laura Foster murder case in 1866 and the execution of Dula in 1868, events the Kingston Trio treated in the folk ballad which they broadcast world-wide in 1958. The Ballad of Tom Dula, Time Was, and The Summer People were recently republished in soft covers by Parkway Publishers, Inc.
Ransom Street Quartet: Poems and Stories
by
Juanita Brown Tobin
Juanita Tobin, who was born in 1915, lives in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. These poems and stories reflect her life: childhood, life with a man named Simon, her work with patients at Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina and retirement. "Ransom Street Quartet gives us Juanita Tobin's life, which is to say that it's her credible fiction. As with all good fiction, I believe every word of it." Stephen Dunn, author of Walking Light: Essays & Memoirs. (From the Foreword).
Reviews:
We have known Juanita Brown Tobin since she was a member of the Writers Workshop at NC State University, and consider her an "original," a remarkable talent as a writer and teller of tales. That talent is strongly found in her latest book, Ransom Street Quartet, Poems and Stories." Sam Ragan, The Pilot, January 4, 1996, p. 1-B.
License My Roving Hands
by
Juanita Tobin
ISBN: 1-887905-26-X, Softcover. $10.00.
License My Roving Hands is the second volume of poetry by Juanita Brown Tobin. Eighty-five year old Juanita resides at the Extended Care Facility at Blowing Rock Hospital. There she eats three meals a day, stays warm and safe in her room, and writes her weekly Extended Adventure column for the The Blowing Rocket. She has created a salon and is hostess to young and old alike who share her delight in the expressive arts. Maureen Cannon, a poet, says of Juanita's poetry, "In one deft phrase she can paint a picture, intimate a life story, tease, tantalize, evoke an immediate and powerful response from the reader."