Akron Public Library

"Haunted by her sister's mysterious disappearance, Lucy Wilson arrives in Rowan County, Kentucky, in the spring of 1911 to work for Cora Wilson Stewart, superintendent of education. When Cora sends Lucy into the hills to act as scribe for the mountain people, she is repelled by the primitive conditions and intellectual poverty she encounters. Few adults can read and write.Born in those hills, Cora knows the plague of illiteracy. So does Brother Wyatt,...

Hawk and Elizabeth Spencer struggle to raise a family in the Tennessee frontier in the midst of Indian troubles and the American Revolution.

Skipping back and forth in time from the 18th to the late 20th century, and drawing on her own family history, McCrumb tells two stories in her appealing new novel, one heading toward, the other returning to, the Appalachians. In the present-day sections, 83-year-old John Walker is slowly dying in the eastern Tennessee town where he has lived most of his life, while his estranged daughter, Linda Walker better known as the country singer Lark McCourry...

Oral History, the lyrical saga of a Virginia mountain family, follows four generations of Cantrells over more than a century. With each chapter, Lee Smith, a master of regional voices, adds another branch to a family tree that sings with secrets and sadness, beauty and joy. Researching an assignment for an Oral History course, Jennifer drives to the Virginia hills where her mother and father grew up. Raised by a stepmother, the young college student...

The Hatfield-McCoy feud, the entertaining subject of comic strips, popular songs, movies, and television, has long been a part of American folklore and legend. Ironically, the extraordinary endurance of the myth that has grown up around the Hatfields and McCoys has obscured the consideration of the feud as a serious historical event. In this study, Altina Waller tells the real story of the Hatfields and McCoys and the Tug Valley of West Virginia...

"Wylodine comes from a world of paranoia and poverty--her family grows marijuana illegally, and life has always been a battle. Now she's been left behind to tend the crop alone. Then spring doesn't return for the second year in a row, bringing unprecedented, extreme winter. With grow lights stashed in her truck and a pouch of precious seeds, she begins a journey, determined to start over away from Appalachian Ohio. But the icy roads and strangers...

"Frigid February air has settled into the bones of the Blue Ridge Mountains, making for a slow foxhunting season, though 'Sister' Jane Arnold's enthusiasm is not so easily deterred. With the winter chill come tweed coats, blazing fireplaces, and perhaps another to share the warmth with, as the bold hunting scarlets worn by the men in Sister Jane's hunting club make the hearts of women flutter--until someone's heart stops entirely. Harry Dunbar, a...

On t.p.: Ironmaking, blacksmithing, flintlock rifles, bear hunting, and other affairs of plain living.

In 1966, in the Appalachian Mountains of Northeast Georgia, a teacher and his students founded a quarterly magazine that they named Foxfire, after a phosphorescent lichen. In 1972, several articles from the magazine were published in book form and the acclaimed Foxfire series was born. Some thirty years later, the books continue to teach a philosophy of simplicity in living that is truly enduring in its appeal. Much more than "how to" books, the Foxfire...