Berthoud Community Library District

After their father's death, two children and their invalid mother head south to the rugged mountains of southwestern Virginia to live with their great-grandmother. They flourish until the local coal-and gas company comes around conniving to seize their property.

Wildlife biologist Deanna is caught off guard by an intrusive young hunter, while bookish city wife Lusa finds herself facing a difficult identity choice, and elderly neighbors find attraction at the height of a long-standing feud.

Seen through the eyes of the youngest daughter, Annie, the Richards family faces triumph and hardships during the Great Depression and World War II.

On the last day of eighth grade, Maggie begins to dream of finding a way to escape the drudgery and confinement of life in the hollow and establish her independence. Her plan begins to fall in place when she enters high school and discovers she has a natural talent for excelling in shorthand, typing, and other business classes. Meanwhile she spares no effort in helping her family continue to survive despite their poverty, a less than fertile few acres,...

Oral History, the lyrical saga of a Virginia mountain family, follows four generations of Cantrells over more than a century. With each chapter, Lee Smith, a master of regional voices, adds another branch to a family tree that sings with secrets and sadness, beauty and joy. Researching an assignment for an Oral History course, Jennifer drives to the Virginia hills where her mother and father grew up. Raised by a stepmother, the young college student...

Folklorist and academic Fever Devilin, a native of the Georgia Appalachians, is drawn into a strange mystery that has its roots deep in the hills of Blue Mountain. After a spat during a church supper, Able Carter and his fiancee, Truevine Deveroe, are missing. A bit later, a body is found in the ravine behind Fever's cabin and identified as the local mortician, Harding Pinehurst. Folks suspect Able Carter of the deed. A few -- like Truevine's drunken,...

In 1861 the Civil War reached the mountainous South--where the enemy was you neighbor, the victims were your friends, and the wrong army was whichever one you joined. When Malinda Blalock's husband, Keith, joined the army, she dressed as a boy and went with him. They spent the war close to home in the North Carlina mountains, acting as Union guerilla fighters, raiding the farms of Confederate sympathizers making as much trouble as they could locally....

Life in the small Southern town of Sutter's Cross is comfortable and predictible until the homeless man shows up. Disheveled and bruised, he seems to have no past. But almost immediately, the town is touched by his quiet presence. Who is this stranger?

In the Appalachians, a historian writing on Katie Wyler, a young woman kidnapped from the area by Indians in 1789, sets out to retrace her tragic journey. He is unaware her spirit haunts the hills, nor is he aware that an escaped convict is on the loose. By the author of Bimbos of the Death Sun.

Serving as midwives to the residents of a small mining town in prewar Appalachia, Elizabeth and her mother share in the intimate details of the lives of every family in the region, but none of their neighbors know their own secrets and desires.