Book Club
An interview with Christopher Scotton, author of “Secret Wisdom of the Earth”
From The Appalachian Voice Online: “Secret Wisdom of the Earth,” the debut novel by Christopher Scotton released this week, is a coming-of-age story that takes familiar themes — tragedy and the quest to find healing — and explores them with the backdrop of a Central Appalachian community beset by mountaintop removal coal mining.
Appalachian Bookshelf
The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature By David George Haskell In a circle of Cumberland Plateau old-growth forest roughly the size of a hula hoop, Haskell finds reasons for awe and wonder in the anatomy of a flower or the heartbeat of a chickadee. Inspired by both the place-based writings of Thoreau and…
Read MoreThe Evening Hour: Painting a Gripping Picture of a Gritty Place
Review by Paige Campbell Carter Sickels’ debut novel “The Evening Hour” is a study in contradictions, many rooted deeply in its Appalachian setting. The town of Dove Creek is a remote southern West Virginia community cloaked in the same desperate, static smallness that often characterizes the Appalachia of literature. At the same time, the setting…
Read MoreAppalachian Elegy by bell hooks: “an avalanche of splendor”
By Matt Grimley bell hooks doesn’t claim to be an Appalachian. But through her latest collection of poems, Appalachian Elegy, (University Press of Kentucky, 2012) we get the bigger message: that doesn’t matter. bell hooks was born in Hopkinsville, Ky., in 1952 with the name Gloria Jean Watkins. A celebrated teacher, author and activist, she…
Read MoreUneven Ground: Examining Appalachian History Since 1945
By Matt Grimley Imagine two Appalachias: one of banjos, moonshine, and dilapidated log cabins; the other of people, their families, their rich history and unfulfilled futures. That dichotomy and how it is exploited is what University of Kentucky professor Ronald D. Eller writes about in “Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945.” Eller writes with lucidity and…
Read MoreStand Up That Mountain: A Contemporary Tale of Conservation
By Brian Sewell In the movement to end destructive mining practices that have made parts of Appalachia a sacrifice zone, stories of David versus Goliath proportions often emerge. In “Stand Up That Mountain,” Jay Erskine Leutze relates his own underdog tale in personal and powerful fashion. It all began the day that Leutze received a…
Read MoreThe Blueberry Years: An Ode to Farming and Family
Reviewed by Kara Dodson The story of Jim and Sarah Minick’s years managing a blueberry farm read as sweet as a warm, ripe berry plucked from the bush. The courageous and loving young homesteaders recount ten years of preparing, planting, and picking to bring alive a shared dream: an organic, pick-your-own blueberry farm in Floyd…
Read MoreRevealing the Common Thread: Blue Ridge Commons
By Brian Sewell Last year, Western North Carolina recognized the 100-year anniversary of the Weeks Act, the law that gave the U.S. Forest Service the ability to purchase private land in the Eastern United States to be managed as National Forests. Historian Kathryn Newfont’s new book, Blue Ridge Commons: Environmental Activism and Forest History in…
Read MoreUnder The Same Sun: Pen Pals Introduce Young Readers To Social Justice
By Molly Moore While on a class field trip to a New York City supermarket, Meena Joshi spies a box of okra, one of her favorite foods in her native India. Emblazoned with the word “KENTUCKY,” the box displays mountains that remind her of her childhood home. When her teacher offers the class a list…
Read MoreBook Club Mini Review: “Kentucky Folktales: Revealing Stories, Truths, and Outright Lies”
By Brian Sewell Even before opening Mary Hamilton’s ode to storytelling, the rustcolored cover, adorned with a rocking chair and the kind of rustic text that might be carved in a tree, invites the reader into a world of oral traditions shared among Kentuckians for years before being captured on the page. Hamilton is a…
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