Book Club
Edible Landscaping: Beautiful and Delicious
Review by Maureen Halsema Plump cherries ripe for picking, weighty pears begging to be plucked, aromatic lavender ready to be gathered—all within the confines of your yard! Nan K. Chase shares how to plant, manage and prepare these delectable plants in her book, “Eat Your Yard! Edible trees, shrubs, vines, herbs and flowers for your…
Read MoreSix New Favorites for Your Spring Reading List
A collaborative piece written by Maureen Halsema, Julie Johnson, Sarah Vig, Jamie Goodman, JW Randolph and Jeff Deal As snow piled up in the mountains this past winter, we realized one book review would simply not suffice. Here are a few Appalachian reads that kept us warm through the long winter months. White Blazes Stephen…
Read MoreSerena: Historical Fiction with a Taste for Blood (and Timber)
By Sarah Vig Set in the mountains of North Carolina during the early years of the Great Depression, the landscape of Ron Rash’s “Serena” (Harper Collins, $24.95) is at once familiar and foreign. Serena is the new bride of timber baron George Pemberton–she is anything but! Smart, beautiful, and fiercely independent at a time when…
Read MoreMountain Mysteries
Bigfoot, UFOs, and the Downright Paranormal In Appalachia By Joe Tennis In Larry Thacker’s world, UFOs have touched down in the Appalachian Mountains. And, there’s a mysterious Bigfoot creature roaming the dense woods of Tennessee. Thacker—the director of student success and retention at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn.—is the author of the recently released…
Read MoreProdigal Summer: Steamy and Smart Summer Reading
Story by Sarah Vig Appalachian author Barbara Kingsolver’s 2000 novel “Prodigal Summer” reads at times like a steamy romance, a natural history, and a family drama, and it is the best of all these things: sexy, smart, lovely, and at times deeply sad. The unlikely mixture of all these elements makes the book perfect for…
Read MoreSomething’s Rising
Appalachians Against Mountaintop Removal Editor’s Note: In this issue, we would like to introduce what we hope will become a regular feature in this publication, the Appalachian Voice Book Club. Every issue, we will select a book, provide you with a short review and questions to guide your reading and discussion, and point you to…
Read MoreSix Degrees: Read the Crystal Ball of Climate Change
By Sarah Vig For this issue, the AV Book Club choose to read a book that delves into an issue with the potential to impact the lives of every human being, indeed most every living thing on the planet: global warming. In “Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet” (HarperCollins, $16.95), British journalist Mark…
Read MoreAppalachian Bookshelf
These four picks for Appalachian literature and history represent an astonishing depth and variety. For more, see www.appvoices.org/books. • Field Guide to Medicinal Wild Plants, by Bradford Angier, Stackpole Books (2008). This revised edition brings back a 30-year-old classic field guide with the help of biologist David K. Foster. In the book, for instance, you will…
Read MoreTwelve Ghost Story Books of Appalachia
Compiled by Sarah Vig Appalachia has a long and rich folklore tradition, and as anyone knows who has ever sat around a campfire at night, or held a flashlight under their chin, ghost stories are one of the most thrilling parts of oral tradition. As our issue is coming out so near to the time…
Read MoreThe Story of Mysterious Martha
By Joe Tennis In the Bible, it is told, all things will return to dust. But for one little girl in Wise, Virginia, the vision of seeing dust turn into things that talked would prove so haunting that she would be too frightened to sleep alone. It happened on the campus of the University of…
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