If you spend enough time with Appalachian family history, you notice the spaces where names should be. Old Bibles with half-filled pages. Photos with faces nobody can place. Stories that trail off when someone asks a question that a generation never answered. The gaps feel small at first, but they linger. They hint at people…
Morning comes early because it has to. The stove takes time. In the quiet of Appalachian isolation, the path to the spring is slick with dew, and the cow bellows until the gate latch lifts. A wagon trip into town must wait for the creek to drop and the sky to clear. Until then, work…
In the gray stillness before dawn, Mae pulled her daughter’s coat tighter and brushed snow from the girl’s cap. The chill settled in deep this far up the valley, where wind rolled off the ridges and cut through every layer of wool. Along the tracks, families waited in silence, boots crunching against the snow. Down…
From the pull-off near Rocky Knob, Rock Castle Gorge lies open below the Blue Ridge Parkway. Ridges step down into the valley where families once farmed and built their homes. Most visitors see only the view, not the community that once filled the hollow. When the Blue Ridge Parkway arrived in the 1930s, it changed…
The drive between Mount Airy, North Carolina, and Hillsville, Virginia, takes about twenty minutes today. Route 52 winds up and over Fancy Gap Mountain, a two-lane road that climbs up to three thousand feet before landing in Carroll County. The pavement is smooth, the grades are steady, and modern engines handle the climb without complaint….
Across the Atlantic The ship pitched hard in the swells of the North Atlantic. Below deck, young Johann Dahle gripped the rough wood of his bunk and tried to steady his thoughts. He was twenty years old, a soldier-for-hire from Hesse, one of the small German states that had agreed to rent out regiments to…
In 1938, the Blue Ridge Mountains still held pockets of people far from any public library. Roads were rough, mail was slow, and a borrowed book might pass through several hands before finding its way back to a shelf. Into this gap came the Packhorse Librarians: women on horseback or mule, carrying books into places…
A baby born blue was nothing new on Troublesome Creek. Neighbors had seen it before. The midwife knew the color would fade in a few days for some, but not for others. For certain families in this corner of eastern Kentucky, blue skin wasn’t a sign of sickness. It was a sign of kinship. The…
You might not recognize the Mennonite family that lives a few blocks over. The clothes are modest, sure, but not old-fashioned. The car’s parked in the driveway. The kids play outside after supper. Like other Mennonites in Appalachia, their lifestyle isn’t what sets them apart. Lifestyle is simply a reflection of their convictions. They’ve been…
You could hear the shop before you saw it. A steady rhythm of clinks and taps echoed from the open door—tin snips biting into metal, hammers flattening seams, the soft hiss of solder melting into a joint. Inside, the tinsmith bent over a worn bench lit by lamplight, sleeves rolled up, hands blackened with soot….