I live in the southern Appalachians, a place that boasts some of the most beautiful views on earth and laments some of the most ravaged landscapes. As a fiction writer who is passionate about nature and human rights, Iâve taken up my pen to craft a novel with regular people at its heart, all living regular lives that are disrupted by tragedies all too common to the region. This is the general throughline in the books I am recommending, although the themes differ. Iâve offered a variety of genres, as well, which best reflects my own bookshelf at my home in the hills.
This is the novel I can only wish I had written. Pancakeâs expansive story of a family in a desperate struggle to save their homes and hollows from the ravages of mountaintop removal mining gives voice to modern-day Appalachians in the same wayTheGrapes of Wrath spoke for the displaced farmers of the Dustbowl era. (As one who loves Steinbeckâs epic, I donât make this connection lightly!) Another heartrending masterwork that I couldnât stop thinking about as I read this book is Barbara KingsolverâsThe Poisonwood Bible because of its centering on motherhood, its similar structure, and its ability to pull the reader into the lives of the characters. This is storytelling at its best. I couldnât put it down.Â
A West Virginia family struggles amid the booms and busts of the Appalachian coal industry in this âpowerful, sure-footed, and hauntingâ environmental novel from an author with echoes of John Steinbeck (The New York Times Book Review)
Set in present day West Virginia, this debut novel tells the story of a coal mining familyâa couple and their four childrenâliving through the latest mining boom and dealing with the mountaintop removal and strip mining that is ruining what is left of their hometown. As the mine turns the mountains âto slag and wastewater,â workers struggle with layoffs and children find adventureâŚ
I loved reading this novel first and foremost for its exquisite craftswomanship; van Eerden just writes beautiful sentences. Her descriptions are palpable, delivering the reader to a hollow and its peopleâall characters who remain intricately bound to their homeplaces no matter how far away they travel. Like my own novel, this story revolves around women and also includes an LGBTQ character. And themes of grieving and motherhood, love and loss, and compromise, are naturally woven into the fabric of the story.Â
Set in small-town West Virginia in the twilight of the eighties, Call It Horses tells the story of three women-niece, aunt, and stowaway-and an improbable road trip.
Frankie is an orphan (or a reluctant wife). Mave is an autodidact (or the town pariah). Nan is an artist (or the town whore). Each separately haunted, Frankie, Mave, and Nan-with a hound in tow-set out in an Oldsmobile Royale for Abiquiu and the desert of Georgia O'Keeffe, seeking an escape from everything they've known.
Frankie records the journey in letters to her aunt Mave'sâŚ
Chasing Light is a lyrical meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. At its core, it is a story of resilience, forgiveness, and the transformational power of human connection. It sheds light on the overlooked realities of homelessness and addiction, while emphasizing the importance of compassionâŚ
This is not a work of fiction but a memoir by a novelist, an unflinching portrait of generations of a family ever at the brink. It reads almost as vignettes, exquisitely crafted and somehow soothing even in their brutal honesty. Poignantly rendered pieces of the authorâs life reflect aspects of Appalachian culture that can often come across as stereotyping, but the personal nature of this work combined with Dodd Whiteâs skilled pen makes it an authentic view into struggles endemic to the region. He bravely writes of suicides in his family, most heartbreakingly that of his son. Until I read this book, Joan Didionâs A Year of Magical Thinkingwas secure in its position at the top of my âbest memoirsâ list.
This collection of fourteen essays by Charles Dodd White-praised by Silas House as "one of the best prose stylists of Appalachian literature"-explores the boundaries of family, loss, masculinity, and place. Contemplating the suicides of his father, uncle, and son, White meditates on what it means to go on when seemingly everything worth living for is lost. What he discovers is an intimate connection to the natural world, a renewed impulse to understand his troubled family history, and a devotion to following the clues that point to the possibility of a whole life.
Avoiding easy sentiment and cliche, White's transformative languageâŚ
Iâm including some verse in my list because thereâs no better way to capture Appalachiaâs mix of beauty and sorrow than with poetry. This collection by Joseph Bathanti, former poet laureate of North Carolina and longtime inhabitant of the Blue Ridge Mountains, lays bare the effects of mountaintop removal mining against a backdrop of the serene landscape it destroys. I donât often read a book of poetry more than once, but I found myself skipping back through this one a lot, unable to turn away from the forsaken people and places of the poems.Â
Light at the Seam, a new collection from North Carolina poet Joseph Bathanti, is an exploration of mountaintop removal in southern Appalachian coal country. The volume illuminates and champions often invisible people residing, in a precarious moment in time, on the glorious, yet besieged, Appalachian earth. Their call to defend it, as well as their faith that the land will exact its own reckoning, constitutes a sacred as well as existential quest. Rooted in social and restorative justice, Light at the Seam contemplates the earth as fundamentally sacramental, a crucible of awe and mystery, able to regenerate itself and itsâŚ
Malcolm Before X is about finding a way to continue moving forward after everything has been taken from you. While in prison, Malcolm Little discovered the power of reading and found a way to transform his character and become a better man. This half-biography focuses on that transformation, especially hisâŚ
This book may seem an aberration, but it makes my list because it touches on my own research life, my own literary journey, and my heart: it connects Appalachia and Ireland. This is a book of poetryâsimple, lovely pieces written in both placesâaccompanied by gorgeous photographs of nature and landmarks. As one who travels to Ireland whenever I can, and pines for it when I canât, this book transports me from my mountain home to those shores across the Atlantic. I am a visual writer, in that I see my stories play out, and especially the stories I imagine for my Irish immigrant ancestors. So a picture book of poems that connects my two homelands strikes the right note with me, lets my mind relax and create.
Journey from Appalachia to Ireland with Laura Treacy Bentley in Looking For Ireland: An Irish-Appalachian Pilgrimage (Mountain State Press). Both chapbook and a work of art, her book creates a seamless alchemy of elegant poems and stunning photographs. Laura is a poet, novelist, point-and-shoot photographer, and West Virginia native whose work has been widely published in the United States and Ireland. She is the author of a poetry collection, Lake Effect (2006), a novel, The Silver Tattoo (2013), and a short story prequel, Night Terrors.
In this contemporary novel set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southern Appalachia, the lives of two young women are knit together when one is left alone on a farm after the sudden loss of her partner and the other is displaced by mountaintop removal coal mining. An embedded historical plot line follows the exodus of ancestors from Ireland during the Great Hunger to their settling in the Blue Ridge, a tale of oppression and migration that mirrors the current circumstances. In Circling Flight is as much a story of love and loss of the human kind as it is a treatise to the elemental relationship between people and their land.
What do Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, and Jerry Seinfeld have in common? They were all devotees of George Carlin.
In my book, I take a deep dive into the comedic artistry of one of America's most important funny men. George Carlin was the king of all media: print, recordings, movies,âŚ
During the First World War, an extraordinary intelligence unit operated from Cairo's Savoy Hotel, combining archaeologists, academics, and soldiers to revolutionize British intelligence in the Middle East. Overshadowed by Lawrence of Arabia, the Arab Bureau's significance has remained hidden ever since.
This study uncovers the Bureau's story through newly discoveredâŚ
