Booklist and Notes

Booklist and Notes George Brosi Alt, Jeff. A Walkfor Sunshine: A 2,160 mile Expedition for Charity on the Appalachian Trail. Cincinnati: Dreams Shared Publications, 2000. 285 pages with maps, color photos and a Suggested Reading list. Trade paperback. $14.95. Sunshine in this title is the name of an assisted care facility near the author's hometown of Toledo, Ohio, where his brother lives. Jeff Alt backpacked the length of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine in the summer of 1998 and in the process raised almost $40,000 for Sunshine, Inc. This book relates the story of that trip. Alt hiked with a cell phone, fearing Eric Rudolph, the alleged clinic bomber that the FBI was seeking in Western North Carolina at the time, and mostly ignored the natural and human history of the region he hiked. Although he touches on some potentially engaging themes, like his affection for a woman who doesn't appear to reciprocate his feelings, no clear focus emerges. Nevertheless, the book is clearly written and interesting. Baldacci, David. Wish You Well. New York: Warner Books, 2000. 401 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $24.95. Baldacci thrives as a famous author of international best-selling thrillers, but here he makes a conscious change to writing a more "literary" novel that some individual commentators on amazon.com call a "chick book." Based on the lives of Baldacci's mother and her family, this book is set in the mountains of Southwest Virginia in 1940. The main characters, twelve-year-old Lou and seven-year-old Oz, move from New York to their great-grandmother's farm when their father is killed and their mother rendered comatose by a car wreck. As the kids become acclimated to mountain farm life, the farm itself becomes threatened by developers. This leads to a climactic courtroom scene reminiscent of Baldacci's earlier novels. "What the novel offers, above all is bone-deep emotional truth, as its myriad characters—each, except for one cartoonish villain, as real as a readers' own kin—grapple not just with issues of life and deathbut with the sufferings andjoys of daily existence in a setting detailed with finely attuned attention and a warm sense of wonder. This novel has a huge heart—and millions of readers are going to love it." - Publishers Weekly. David Baldacci (b. 1960) grew up in Richmond, Virginia and received a law degree from the University of 69 Virginia. He practiced law for nine years in Washington, D.C. before embarking on a literary career which has resulted in a current estimate of over twenty million books in print world-wide. Bentley, Stanley L. Native Orchids ofthe Southern Appalachian Mountains. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000. 235 pages with color photographs on practically every page, maps, charts, a glossary, a bibliography and an index. Trade paperback. $24.95. Hardback. $39.95. This super-impressive and gorgeous book provides a complete overview of the native orchids of the Appalachians; it covers 52 species within 21 genera. The most rare, Bentley's Coralroot Orchid, actually discovered by the author himself, is found only in Monroe County, West Virginia. Others, as indicated by maps for each species, flourish in practically every county of the mountain region. This book is so clearly organized and presented that it is perfect for all readers, from the neophyte to expert, all of whom will learn much from it and derive considerable pleasure in the process. The author works for the school system in his native Pulaski County, Virginia. Bissell, Sallie. In the Forest ofHarm. New York: Bantam Books, 2001. 304 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $32.95. Although this is the author's first book, rights to its publication have been sold in Germany, Japan and the Netherlands, and the publisher has committed to a major advertising campaign and a sequel to be published next year. The basic story line centers on a female prosecutor, Mary Crow, who takes two fellow Atlanta women lawyers to the North Carolina mountains to relax while she snoops into her Cherokee mother's rape and murder twelve years previous. They are pursued by both a local deranged...