Happy New Year!

Well, here we go with 2009. I hope it will be the beginning of a peaceful healing of our world. It seems that things have really gotten out of hand with the war and the economy. Prejudice and greed have run rampant for too long and as with all things too much creates an imbalance that causes destruction and leaves open the way for new beginnings. Prejudice and hate are at the heart of my latest book review. I hope you enjoy it.

Angel’s Rest By Charles Davis. Canada: MIRA Books, 2006. 312 pp.
ISBN: 0778324737

Reviewed by Diana Fields

Living in Appalachia, I am always interested in books that pertain to this region, fiction or non-fiction. Angel’s Rest written by Charles Davis is a fictional account of a young boy growing up in the mountains of Virginia in the 1960’s. While the town in the story is called Sunnytown, the descriptions of the areas in this book, as well as the title, give the impression that the setting of the story is actually here in Giles County.

Charles W. York, as he calls himself, is eleven years old when his father the mayor of Sunnytown is shot. Charlie’s whole world is turned upside down as a result. People who were once his friends, now won’t even make eye contact when they see him in town. The kids in school now ridicule him and even go so far has to beat him up if given the chance. Why? Because the rumor around town says that Charlie’s own mother shot his father. And while the police don’t have enough evidence to arrest her, the town folk including Charlie’s grandparents have already convicted her and Charlie is paying the price. Charlie makes friends with Jimmy and the Wilson brothers other boys who have been deemed outcasts by the local kids. Together with the help of a Boy Scout manual Charlie stole from the library, they form a troop. The boys decide to spend their first night camping out on their own. They set up camp near the reservoir on the side of a mountain named Angel’s Rest. His mother says it got its name because it was a place angels rested before coming down to help folks. In the middle of the night while Charlie is on fire watch, he hears someone approaching in the dark. Suddenly, his worst fear is confirmed when he is face to face with Hollis Thrasher the crazy Korean war veteran that lives alone in a shack on the mountain. Charlie grew up in fear of Hollis Thrasher. His mother had always told him to keep away from Hollis, but would never say why. The rumor in town was that Hollis spent time in the mental hospital when he got back from the war. Some folk even said that Hollis was responsible for the fire that killed his wife and baby years ago. All Charlie knew for sure was that Hollis Thrasher was a big, dark, scary man who may have had something to do with his father’s death. Charlie and the other “scouts” don’t waste anytime running off the mountain and away from Hollis.

One morning Charlie wakes up at home to find his mother gone and Lacy Albert Coe, an old black man his father had befriended, is there to take care of him. His mother has been arrested. Now the folks living on Duncan Hill do not care for a black man living with up there with Charlie. Then when Lacy doesn’t come back from town when he is supposed one afternoon, Charlie doesn’t know what to do. Finally, Lacy shows up in the middle of the night, he is beaten, barefoot and frozen half to death. When Charlie asks Lacy what happened, Lacy tells him some men took him for a ride but won’t go into details. With his mother in jail and Lacy in danger, Charlie sees no hope for the future and nowhere to turn. One night Lacy wakes Charlie and tells him to pack his things that his mother is getting out of jail and they are going away. As soon as Charlie is packed he makes his way to the kitchen to find a large dark figure sitting at the kitchen table. It is none other than Hollis Thrasher. Charlie runs to get Lacy only to find that Lacy expects Charlie to go off in the middle of the night with Hollis Thrasher to get his mother from the jail. In the midst of his fear and confusion, Charlie decides to trust Lacy as the he is the only one who has never lied to him. By the end of the story, Charlie ends up living in a lighthouse in Maine where he learns who shot his father, why his mother told him to keep away from Hollis and most importantly he learns that prejudice and rumors spread fear and hate.

Prejudice is a form of hate that is taught by parents, by peers, by media and by governments. Prejudice is a terrible thing that can be handed down from generation to generation and it is not always race oriented. It can be based on race, class, religion or any other social characteristic that is different from the majority. The only way to end prejudice is to replace it with tolerance. No two beings are exactly alike that is the beauty of creation. It is our differences that enhance the experience of life. How dull the world would be if we were all the same. And rumors can be as harmful as prejudice. False accusations create suspicions and hate as well and many innocent people are hurt as a result. The best way to stop rumors is to not listen to them and if that can’t be helped, the next best thing is to not pass them on.

While the story kept my attention enough for me to read it straight through, it was almost as if I had read the story before. Part of the plot was similar to a book, Melungeon Winter by Patrick Bone, which dealt with the affects of prejudice on a teenage white boy growing up in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1960’s. The other part was similar to a book, The Sign of the Book by John Dunning, which dealt with the jailing of a mother for the shooting of her husband. This being the case, I was able to guess who killed Charlie’s father, which unfortunately made the book predicable in my case. However this will probably not be the case for most readers.

Angel’s Rest is author Charles Davis’ first novel. Davis, a former federal law enforcement officer and US Army soldier, grew up in southwest Virginia, lived in Maine, North Carolina and now resides in New Hampshire. His second book, Drifting South, ISBN: 0778325423 went on sale December 1, 2008.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas is just around the corner. I have just done a book review for a book that would make a wonderful gift for any Appalachia fan.

Strings of Life – Conversations with Old-Time Musicians from Virginia and North Carolina
By Kevin Donleavy. Virginia: Pocahontas Press, Inc, 2004. 345 pp. ISBN: 0936015497

Reviewed by Diana Fields

The Great Wagon Road, present VA Route 11, running from Pennsylvania to Georgia was the path carved first by the Native Americans and then used by the earliest pioneers on their quest for land and freedom. Not only immigrating Scot’s and Irish, along with the English indentured servants but runaway African slaves as well, all just looking for a place to raise their families and worship as they chose without the interference of any government. This influx of cultures to the mountains and valleys of Appalachia brought with it a blending of several ethnic musical styles. Strings of Life – Conversations with Old-Time Musicians from Virginia and North Carolina by Kevin Donleavy is more than an academic history of traditional Old-Time music it is a personal in-depth interview with hundreds of living musicians living in 11 counties on the borders of Virginia and North Carolina.

Kevin Donleavy, graduate of University of Virginia, independent historian, musicologist and educator has combined his talents to create a “historical-musical census-of-sorts” identifying more than 1300 banjo and fiddle players of traditional music in a span of over 250 years. Donleavy spent 7 years traveling, living, playing music and most importantly listening to the residents of Carroll, Grayson, Patrick and Wythe counties in Virginia and Alleghany, Caswell, Forsyth, Rockingham, Stokes, Surry and Wilkes counties in North Carolina. He has now complied a collection of oral histories not found anywhere else. Strings of Life is well organized and Mr. Donleavy’s research is thoroughly documented complete with a annotated Discography and Bibliography, as well as, three separate indexes: Persons Mentioned; Tunes; and Bands and Musical Groups. In addition, of the 1300 some musicians mentioned in this volume, Donleavy has been able to identify the burial sites of about 660 in 170 graveyards scatted throughout the 11 counties. Some of the families documented are Hawks, Jarrell, Lowe, Martin, McKinney, Sutphin and Tate, along with many others. It would have been nice if a list of the nearly one hundred wonderful photos had been included in the table of contents, but truly the pictures are enough.

The first chapter, “Where Cultures Meet. The people, the geography, the instruments and the music” gives an overview of the history of traditional Old-Time music. Traditional Old-Time music is distinct in that its combination of banjo and fiddle come with a unique style of picking and bow-pulling added to traditional early English music, this is the ancestral music of the Appalachian Mountains still played today. Perhaps the isolation of the mountains from the rest of the developing New World gave room for more tolerance of race and religion. The area Donleavy has concentrated on is home to a large population of Melungeons. Melungeons were referred to as “free persons of color” by census takers and school officials, many being denied the right to vote or attend school. They are thought to be a mix of the Lost Colony, the Native Americans, runaway African slaves and Portuguese peoples brought for the settlements of the Spanish in Georgia. Together with the immigrating Scots and Irish these merging cultures and races have made Old-Time music what it is today.

The main body of this comprehensive book is focused on the musicians. Each county fills a chapter of its own, except Carroll County, VA, which fills two. Each chapter details not only the musicians and their history, it also traces the history of the songs they play. Songs passed down from generation to generation for the more than 250 years that these families have lived on the borders of Virginia and North Carolina. During the mid 1700’s this region was called “Squabble State”, due to the "squabble" over the western Virginia-North Carolina boundary which started early as 1749, when the tract of land, then known as Sapling Grove of Augusta County Virginia was surveyed for Col. James Patton, as "The Line between Virginia and North Carolina, from Peters Creek to Steep Rock Creek”, overlapped the
1665 King's charter for the Proprietorship of Carolina’s specified boundary. After hundreds of legal disputes over land claimed by Virginia and North Carolina (and part that later became East Tennessee), spanning more than a century and a half, many of settled by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1890. As governments argued over land rights these mountain families traveled back and forth between invisible borders, playing music, getting married and raising families. The music was a social connection for many of the families offering opportunities to court and find a mate. Since the geographic conditions of the landscape made travel arduous, most families inter-married within their own communities helping to keep the music essentially unchanged for generations.

It is amazing sometimes how things come into our lives just when the time is right. I have been researching my ancestors for the last couple of years trying to find when my family of Fields were originally Hamiltons. My search has taken me to the Fields of Grayson County just days before I read this book for my review. Now I find descendents of my ancestors listed in these pages, Blackburn, Cox, Hash, Phipps, Osborn and many others I haven’t documented yet. This book is not just for music buffs, its historical details and accuracy make it a font of information for the genealogist as well.
The region focused on in Strings of Life by Kevin Donleavy is by no means the only area of Appalachia where traditional Old-Time music is alive and well. We right here in Giles County have a heritage rich in Old-Time music boasting greats such as Henry Reed and his family, whose son Dean Reed can still be seen and heard some Thursday nights at Anna’s Restaurant in Narrows. This is a book I would highly recommend.

Haunted Gardens

I would like to thank all that helped with the Haunted Gardens: Mick Branyan, Patti and Willie Amos, Levi Neely, Sparky, Charley Branyan, Jeb Rawnsley, Kim Chambers, Vicky from the Post Office, Alys Sink, Mallory Metheny, Jon, Sarah, Forrest Lee & Lynda Piver, and Jake

We all had a great time.

Mark your calendars now for next year!

Grand Opening

Halloween will be my bookstore's Grand Opening.
There will be refreshments and a door prize.
Following business hours, will be a Haunted Garden Tour.
Admission is only $2.00.
Come on out and bring the whole family.
It is sure to be a SCREAMMMMMMM!